Almost 80 years ago, rich cousins gave my wife’s parents, as a wedding present, an antique walnut drop-leaf table. Polishing for the past 175 years or so has given it a deep, glossy patina. When its leaves are raised, it’s about the size of an oval card table. It’s one of our most beloved possessions.
It stood in the front hall of our Jerusalem apartment for 32 years. On it we placed an antique American soup tureen. The pair would not have been out of place in an American home during the first quarter of the 19th century, although the enormous painting that hung on the wall against which our table stood, a copy of a 16th century Ethiopian portrait of the Archangel Gabriel, would have been wildly out of place. The table, in addition to being pleasant to look at, was useful, inasmuch as its single drawer served as a repository for miscellaneous items, including a pretty letter opener, tickets to upcoming events, duplicate keys, and the keys of a few neighbors who feared locking themselves out of their apartments.
The table, which had moved from New York to San Diego to Jerusalem, then returned to New York, not to our apartment but to a warehouse in the Bronx, where it hibernated for the last three years. Two days ago, it made yet another move, from the warehouse to our apartment, where it arrived with 98 other cartons – mainly books and files but also paintings, ornaments, four chests of drawers, three chairs, a desk, a hanging sideboard, and two tables.
Of the eleven pieces of furniture, two arrived broken. One leg of a small antique walnut chair broke in the middle. The chair is one of a pair, which I had pictured flanking the antique table in our living room. But the table itself was one of the casualties, with one of its legs detached from its base.
This week and the next, our mussar group is considering the trait of gratitude. Let me count the blessings associated with this shipment. I’m thankful for the arrival for all 99 cartons of the transport and thankful that not more of our possessions were damaged. I’m also thankful that the damage can be repaired and that, in the case of the table, the crack will be hard to see.
When concentrating on the trait of gratitude, we’re advised to see the possibility of a good outcome arising from what at the moment seems bad luck, as when you miss a train that, before it reaches its destination, loses its power and heat and sits for six hours while its passengers freeze and its toilets overflow. Offhand it’s not easy to see what good can come from our detached table leg unless it’s to encourage us to part with some of our possessions. We don’t really need any of the goods that we sent from Jerusalem, including that table. It would have been much harder to say goodbye to them three years ago than it would be now, after we’ve lived perfectly well without them all this time.
In the number of homes we’ve occupied since we married - ten or so - we’ve been a bit like nomads, but unlike nomads we haven’t been traveling light. While our possessions give us pleasure, they are also an encumbrance and a burden. In the case of the broken table and chair, for example, we will have to find a reliable furniture repairer and of course we will have to pay a considerable fee for the work. With respect to all the newly transported possessions, we will have to find places to put them, diminishing our storage space and adding to the cost of insurance and the work of cleaning. Why do we need so many books, for instance, when we live only one block away from the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and when so much information is freely available on the internet?
But the books, the furniture, and the paintings that we sent from Jerusalem are totems of our history and in some cases exemplars of beauty. Love, whether of persons or objects, has a price. We will repair the broken table and chair, but perhaps doing so will help us decide if the price of loving objects, whether for their beauty or for their reminders of our history, has become too high. This evaluation, whether we decide on "deaccession" or retention, may be the good that results from the breakage.
I keep all my family furniture, although my flat is overfull. I keep all the diaries and notebooks of my youth (yesterday I found some poems written at the primary school). I keep most of the pictures of my life and of my family. I keep the reports of all the patients I took care of and their letters.I keep at least a souvenir from every trip. As for books, I just sold all the psychological books (that is my previous life) but also all the novels I do not want to re-read. The library is close, Internet is available and I feel much lighter and satisfied. Wally
ReplyDeleteThe shelves in our house are overflowing with books, more than half of which we will never read again. I tell myself, they're useful to have IN CASE they should be needed, but I think their real use is to comfort us with their presence. As we age, we talk of "downsizing," and indeed, we did get rid of many hundreds of books when we moved into our current, less capacious quarters. Still, we retained those books which remind us of where we have been -- past interests, past careers. I think impedimenta grow on us like barnacles on ships.
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