I Want This

Tables and Chairs.  How many do I have already?  I still have the table and chairs G & I purchased when we moved from college to Georgia.  G had a job but we had "no money" and were eating off the wedding gift ironing board and two lawn chairs.  G's cousin took pity on us and arranged for this rattan table and chairs (part of the rattan garden room set he was buying) to be given to us while we paid the HIGH price of $25 per month until the set was paid for.  High because we had only $14 a month for food.  Rent was $99. I still love that rattan set (remembering many happy family meals, puzzles and card games) the four of us had around it's perimeters.  I could just pull it out of the attic storage and use it.

But this set of chairs is calling to me.  LLBean.  My 10 foot table has no chairs.  I can see 8 of these black beauties lined up, four to a side.  And why not get the red rug also?  The one we have is a faded blue.  Of course I still need to go to Beans and actually sit in the chair.  Bean is known for the "skimpiness" of it's things.  I think of it more in the way of "cheapness".  Rather than sell things that have a bit of the grandness of scale and depth, Bean goes for "less" and then charges "more".  Especially in furniture.

Or do I really want a smaller, more intimate table and chairs.  There is only the two of us here now; and perhaps forever more.  My hopes of dinner parties and big family dinners has evaporated as the years have drifted by- 43 years.  I should be realistic by now.  It's just the two of us and on holidays, three.  Twice a year, if we are lucky, it's four and company shares the table with us.

I wonder if I look at this advertisement and see something that doesn't exist. Will never exist, again.  A fantasy. "Build it and they will come".  Ha!  I want what I once had, and loved so much. I miss my children.  Not the adults they have become, but the children they once were.  Such good company.  Around that round table.  My last and best memory of that rattan set in use was a power failure due to a summer storm.  Our son was home from college and the three of us played rummy for a few hours (until the power and the television came back on).  On a warm summer's evening. In my favorite house of all that we have had (6).

I cried while I was typing that last paragraph.  Not from sadness but overwhelmed by the emotional response I felt in that memory.  G and I have such wonderful children. And I love them so very much.  And I'm tired and had a very emotional visit to the dentist, again, this morning at 8 am.  And I am not a morning person.  And it was not a positive experience.

I'm going to walk the dog, do my Pilates and just get on with life. The sun is shining. I am going to make potstickers for dinner.  For two.