All is fair in love and compromise: A kitchen table story
By Melissa Herrera
My husband and I find ourselves in the same discussion over and over. He is a dreamer and a taker-aparter of things, and because I can, I did just make up the word “taker-aparter.” It describes him perfectly.
We’ve had the same kitchen table since we were married: a $30 gem from the old Michael’s department store that used to be in Millersburg. She is long and sturdy, and I sanded her down, stripping the paint meticulously. I remember those paint curls that fell off her and seeing the beautiful wood that lay hidden underneath. I varnished her and watched her emerge from her painted shell.
We’ve sat for countless hours drinking coffee at her, ever banging our knees on the too-low piece of wood that was installed just below the surface on her as a display table. She was never meant to be a kitchen table, yet in the last many years of her life, that’s just what she was.
I sat highchairs up to her and fed my babies, placing casseroles and cookies on her to cool and eat. We’ve played endless Boggle games on her, and I’ve sat myriads of times at her listening to a teenager’s angst.
She’s held court for hordes of kids who have sat around her stuffing their faces or discussing important world events. My office is her surface and where I write my columns and schedule social media for my clients.
My husband and I have dreamt big dreams around her or banged our fists in anger at things we couldn’t change and those we could. She’s served countless Mexican meals and holds scars and secrets that she’ll never give up.
To me, she’s a member of the family.
The discussion we find ourselves in is the exact same one every time. My husband wants to revamp her, raise her up with new legs so we don’t bang our knees every day, paint her, and take some of her apart and put new things in place. And every time he brings it up, I say no, and we find ourselves in one of those marital “discussions” that are never solved.
He thinks I’m stubborn, and I think he should keep his taker-aparter mentality away from our kitchen table. Some things aren’t meant to be changed.
She first had wobbly chairs around her, ones we picked up at garage sales and made do with. Somewhere along the way we bought nice sturdy ones, oak, and those have held us around her for many, many years. I am not, however, attached to these chairs. I’m not an oak-lover, but the price was right, and they’ve been worth it many times over.
I bought a leather-seated chair with wooden arms from my aunt at a garage sale, and it’s the most comfortable chair I own. My husband also loves this chair, and we found another one very similar to it, bought it and placed it up to the table. We’ve come to a place where we are near compromise.
If we get rid of the oak chairs, hunt down and find more vintage leather-seated ones, he will give up on trying to take apart the table. That’s a compromise I can get behind. It also means I can stop hiding his crowbar so he doesn’t try to take apart the table when I’m gone.
I am now on a hunt for sturdy leather-seated wooden chairs to begin their life around my table. They must be solid and wide and be ready to fit into an empty nest. They must be able to cradle my sometimes-aching back and put up with many hours seated in them as I traverse word documents, essays and book-writing.
I don’t care what color the leather is, but it should be able to nestle a sleeping cat and take intermittent wear and tear from visiting adult kids.
I love repurposing and changing things, buying new couches and TV stands, changing my style and taste. But my kitchen table? Never. To quote our new-found obsession, “Game of Thrones,” “Winter is coming. My table is my kingdom, and I’ll fight for it to my death. Prepare to fight or compromise.”
Holding down the line
By Missy Herrera
I watched her there, struggling to decide what Christmas items she wanted at the store. I was third in a long line, and her indecision had made the crowd uncomfortable. Why was her face pinched, and why was she running around frantically choosing more things when there was a line? How dare she make us wait?
The pile of unimportant things in my cart stared back at me as I saw her running to the back of the store for a tree and some stockings. Her face was filled with angst, and I knew she was aware of the growing discontent in the long queue. I saw coats and toys piled in the cart. I knew then that she was Christmas shopping.
My impatience drained away as I saw that she had a budget, a certain amount she could use, and she was trying to get to that amount without going over. It’s an art, shopping on a tiny budget, and isn’t for the faint of heart. The sharp edge of that amount pricked me, familiarity coursing through my veins with each heartbeat. I looked around, knowing I would see restless, impatient faces.
Behind me a woman smiled. We both declared “why should we grow impatient in this season?” and proceeded to chat about mundane things. The line grew, and the woman was running around desperately trying to fill her cart with all her needs.
I didn’t want her to feel weary and rushed, no matter where I needed to be. The calm that went through me and my line mate helped to temper the crowd, and we talked of the holiday, the items in my cart and this season of rushing.
With an intentional, unearthly calm, I needed the woman at the front of the line to know I was here for her, that her anxious scrambling wasn’t necessary, that to get the perfect small artificial tree she needed was important and essential, and that we would hold down the line for as long as it took.
All the words I’ve ever said, were they true? I didn’t want to become another voice spewing hatred in a crowd, the one to cast a stone, to look down on those we rush by in our comfortable haste. Was what my mouth always said obscured by my outward actions?
As she finished and struggled out the door, her tree bobbing gently in the cart, the clerk put the rest of us through quickly. The line rippled imperceptibly, relieved, and I paid for my impractical wares.
I hadn’t needed one thing in my bag, and I quickly headed out the door toward my car. And she was there on the sidewalk, waiting for her ride, the mountain of items in the cart beside her. My words nearly failed me.
“You’ve got a beautiful tree there,” I said to her, “maybe the best one in the store.” She looked at me shyly, and we locked eyes, and she pulled her thin coat tighter across her shoulders. A smile spread across her face.
It cost me nothing but the intentional effort to toss away my rushed countenance and the snark of my tongue, replacing it in small words weighted with grace. I didn’t know her life, but I wanted to. I needed the prodding reminder that it’s not about me and my time and that a line at a thrift store is as good a place as any to be reminded of that: to meet another in their uncomfortable circumstance.
Christmas finds us giving more so than any other time of the year. It brings out compassion that is sometimes missed in other months. The season nicks at our hearts, nudges us to share. It’s effortless to press a button on our computers and donate money or to drop off goods for distribution. Each of these things is good. Each effort is needed.
What happens, though, when we’re faced with the recipients of our giving? When the face of someone desperate to provide a holiday for their family collides with our scattered errandrunning day? We might look away in our discomfort, unsettled in seeing their struggle. Why do we say words online that we’d never say to someone struggling in person? Why do we blame them for their circumstance but proudly give and proclaim it to the world?
Then we are given a chance, the days when we slip intentionally into a sphere we don’t want to physically step into, a tangible moment, a place to see despair and hope incarnate, and we embrace it because we must. We let our impatience drain away, finding our humanity. Because without that humanity, we lose our focus, leaving only our own reflection staring back at us.
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Because a truth revealed, whether in kindness or fury, is still a truth
By Melissa Herrera
Birthday weeks are fun when you’re celebrating 16 or 21, even 30. Any age in and around those years has been good to me. Turning 40 was a game-changer in the best way because of what it punched me in the gut with: the not caring of what anyone else thought of me.
I became more confident, my words flowed better and I learned I didn’t have to try every diet that came along to be a better version of myself. I stopped sucking myself into a vortex of self-discipline and despair and learned to love myself for what I was. I looked in the mirror and liked what I saw: backbone, self-reliance and certainty. You’ve got to pull it out of your throat and own it.
This week brings another year to me, a layering of minutes, days and months that have stacked in irreversible order. I wouldn’t want to reverse it because I would then have to go back to being a Missy I no longer recognize, one who caves to pressures and stances because she cared that people wouldn’t like her, wouldn’t love her.
That is no longer me.
Steel, deftly intertwined along your spine, corresponding fiercely to each vertebrae and nerve that allows you to stand tall or kneel when you must, that’s what I now have and will never turn away from. It can have the adverse effect of things falling away from you, a clashing of beliefs and jaw-dropping revelations that can make you feel as if you’ve never known a person. Or that in reality they’ve never known you.
This is what the years bring you, a desire to keep your slate as full or as wiped-clean as you must, a hanging onto of things or a purging of what no longer sticks. It’s a messy road that becomes clearer the older you get, at least for me.
When you decide you will no longer bend and succumb to the expectations that are imposed on you, that’s when it all changes. When your skin burns off with clarity and the words of expected explanation on your tongue slide away syllable by syllable, that’s when your lungs expand.
You shake it off, all the misdirected doubts and fears and broken feelings that have comprised your past and present. I will open my eyes and step through the tattered chaos to see what lies ahead instead of focusing on tender bruises that won’t — and sometimes can’t — heal.
This Wednesday I turn XLIX, and if you know Roman numerals, which for some odd reason I always excelled in learning, you can figure out how old I will be. It’s a year of lasts, and as always I will plunge into it as a year of firsts too.
Some years have more shine on them than others; the last year or two have been full of eyeopeners that felt like a black eye. But black eyes heal, and I will eat cake and blow out my candles, pushing forward with that bionic spine that won’t give up. I will shed imposed notions and the belief that I must be ever-pliant, the good docile girl.
And if the most I or mine ever do wrong is hurt someone’s feelings with hard-won, unbending beliefs, then I can live with that. Because a truth revealed, whether in kindness or fury, is still a truth.
Pop the corks and bring the biggest chocolate cake you can find. Happy Birthday to me.
