From a Nebraska Farmhouse

 

I found the desk for my writing studio today.

 

It is a handmade, square table, two chairs, all built and born in a Nebraska farmhouse in 1918. I kind of can’t get over that kind of history. I feel like the shop owner handed me a birth certificate along with the receipt.

 

Generally, I’m not really an antiques girl, so I feel a sense of guilt in this tremendous find. Or maybe this feeling is a sense of displaced fortune, since I wasn’t even looking for this beauty.

 

I wonder how many have owned this piece before I have. I wonder if this has been the workspace for homemakers, breadbakers, students of calligraphy. I wonder if families have prayed at this table, if fathers have wept, if mothers have waited for the sunrise. I wonder if children learned to read, if lovers wrote letters.

 

I would like to think yes. Yes to all of the above.

 

And now this table is in my home, in my writing studio.

 

Come home with me, sweet grandmother of a table.

Tell me your stories. I’ll write them down.