Today I sat at my kitchen table to eat lunch. For once, the TV was off and I was left to my own thoughts. As I dipped my salad in the side dressing, I looked across the table to the hutch. It was my mother’s hutch. She purchased it with a dinning room table when we moved to a house in Brownsburg, Indiana when I was 14. When she passed away, the hutch was one of the pieces of furniture I kept. All the pieces were sold, except the hutch. I could not find a buyer for this piece. At the time I was perturbed because this piece of furniture didn’t “fit my style.”
I found myself thinking about my mother as she was deciding upon the home that she and my father purchased. At the time, I didn’t understand the concepts. Home was with mom and dad. We had beds to sleep in, food on the table, school to go to. My life was cared for and sheltered. I had no concept of the problems other people faced. I had no concept of making a home for a family. At 14, I was pretty shallow. The problems of the world were mere concepts seen on TV, not reality.
50 years later, I’ve purchased two homes and decorated them. I’ve married, divorced, and have over 30 years of work experience. I’ve kept a roof over my own head for 40 years, paid bills, worried about if I would have enough money to pay the rent and purchase food. I’ve had my fur babies depending on me. Laughed and cried over their lifes. I’ve made decisions about which piece of furniture to purchase, which car would fit my budget. I’ve had to decide to take a job or turn a job down because I could not travel and leave my babies.
I search for pictures of the hutch, but find none. As I look through old pictures, I see people I cannot place a name to the face. But I always recognize my mother, regardless of her age. Friends have come and gone. People have passed through my life like shadows. Yet I remember this woman, with her beautiful smile, her courage to face obstacles, her determination to live, her patience with this shallow, obstant child. I see her as a young woman with teenage children building a home for her family and making a decision about furniture for the family. This hutch where she displayed her mother’s good china and the flat ware with gold handles she decided upon.
Pictures came into my head of dinners at the the table with family. Every day family dinners, holidays, birthday parties. The physical pictures I search for now reside only in my memories. I remembed us moving to Texas and into an apartment, the table was too big, but we squeezed around it. My sister and her boyfriend, who would become my brother-in-law and my boyfriend, who eventually left. Eventually, she sold the table, but kept the hutch. This hutch that I wanted to sell. This hutch that she stood in a store 50 years ago and decided to purchase to provide a life for her family. It took 50 years, but I now understand what she was doing and her decisions.
No parent is perfect. No child is perfect. There will always be conflict and controversy. But family is something beyond perfection, conflict, and controversy. Family is loving and accepting each other despite the differences, dispite the conflict, despite the imperfections. Family may not be forever on this earth, but they are forever in our lives. Although there are no pictures in my albums, the pictures in my head are now my cherished memories of family. I see family sitting at the dinner table, laughing, talking, arguing, telling stories of their days. And the hutch, a silent witness to these wonderful times.
Thoughts 