Spectrum 2009 - June 16th

Grandma’s Desk Holds Hidden Treasure
June 16, 2009

I have a confession: I am obsessed with a desk. Not just any desk, however; after years of delighting in the press board, assemble-it-yourself IKEA type furniture, I have found rhapsody in a desk. My grandma’s desk.

Throughout the years I’ve sat in many desks. First was the old school desk with a flip-up top and attached seat. By the time I went to college, I had gone through five or six desks, from the press board number to one that was so shallow I had to sit at an angle to see my computer screen.

In the dorm rooms, we had the same style desk in six different rooms. Sometimes, the drawers were off track; other units were chipped, scratched and faded. All were heavy, hard to move and ugly. My first apartment featured a metal desk that could be moved on casters. Of course, doing so meant that all the items on the desk went careening to the floor. But it had wheels!

Then I fell in love with a large, pine, six-drawer desk that my grandma had used for years. I’d never really noticed it, buried under papers and housing a computer that my grandma tried to learn but never mastered.

One day, with permission, I decided to claim the desk as my own. I began to disassemble it. As I emptied the drawers, I suddenly found Jesus. No, really – a photo of Jesus hidden at the bottom of the desk, as if he’d misbehaved. Snickering, I grabbed some wood polish and began to scrub the unit, the cloth revealing inch-by-inch of beautiful craftsmanship and solid construction.

Sitting at this desk is like putting on my grandma’s glasses and viewing her own world. She was the CFO for her family of six. Grandma encouraged us to manage our own finances and savings with the same diligence as she. She was a wonderful collector of cards, and not just for show; she sent them for each holiday, birthday, anniversary and accomplishment.

Once she gave my brother a card “for a BIG boy on his BIG day.” At 23, he was not amused. I also received a card from the slightly disorganized box addressed to “birthday-female.”

But I find myself smiling as I sit down to write a sympathy card to a friend who has recently lost her father, because, at this old pine desk, it feels like family tradition.

And although Grandma’s computer rarely got turned on, knowing that she kept it teaches me to always keep learning. One of my aunts painted the power button with pink nail polish, so she could turn it on without calling her 7-year-old grandson to help.

I, too, must know how to ask for help when I am out of my element. Hidden inside the drawers and files are notes – lots of notes – a seldom-used journal noting Grandma’s youngest daughter is pregnant with a boy; a reminder of an upcoming anniversary dinner; and notes from a Sunday sermon, all collected and stored, sometimes haphazardly, in this old desk.

Those notes don’t speak of my grandma’s cluttered desk or mind. Her notes, her desk, and her life represent the love of a thousand friends and the bond of a family connected by more than mere cards.

I, for one, am thankful that I can sit down every day at my grandma’s desk and work, love and live as she did. Maybe that’s the legacy of this wonderful piece of pine. Maybe my appreciation lies not with a desk, but the woman who occupied it.