ProetryPlace Blog 74
(A friend wrote recently of the trauma associated with leaving her home of many years, a lovely home where she and her husband reared her children and established deep community roots and fast friendships. Her article reminded me of the following piece that I wrote more than ten years ago as we prepared to move from our home of 22+ years in Roswell, Georgia to our current abode in Carrollton. The painted table is in reality a metaphor for all that one must leave behind during transitions such as this.)
THE PAINTED TABLE
I hand over the bills to the driver; it’s a good deal. Seventy-five bucks to haul off the assorted refuse and discards—a three-wheeled lawnmower, the 70’s Evinrude 2-horse, three black and white TVs, one white side-walled tire, old furniture—all the stuff we will not have room for in our new, down-sized home.
I watch the loaded truck move down the driveway. A face peers out from beneath the holey tarp. The face is green with yellow eyes. Then it is gone.
~
In 1957, the third year of our marriage, I moved with my reluctant bride from metropolitan Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the rolling country roads of Centre County, Pennsylvania. I had accepted a graduate fellowship at the Pennsylvania State University, and I was eager to begin my advanced education and this new adventure with my young wife at my side. Dolly shared less of my enthusiasm as she moved away from her childhood home and family for the first time. The adventure she faced was less defined and less appealing than mine.
We arrived a week before the truck that would bring our small load of household belongings, and we rented a small apartment near the town of Lemont on the outskirts of State College and University Park. Our back yard looked out over farm fences and fields and onto Mount Nittany, home of the mountain cougar mascot of Penn State sports, the Nittany Lion. In another direction we could observe small children playing at recess on the grassy slopes that surrounded William McKinley Grade School where Dolly would later teach.
We met our new neighbors who lived in the three other apartments of the plain cinderblock building, and we drove out on small explorations of our surroundings to discover we were in the heart of Amish country, home to the “Pennsylvania Dutch.” We slept on the floor on blankets borrowed from our new landlord; Dolly prepared meals in two small pots purchased at the five and dime store, and we waited and watched for our belongings to appear.
“Come home, the truck is here!” Relief displaced frustration in Dolly’s voice on the telephone. I quickly drove the short five miles from my university laboratory and helped unload a double bed, a dresser, a sleeper-couch, two armchairs, assorted lamps, and boxes of dishes and items we hoped had remained whole. Before the tall doors of the moving- van slammed shut, five more items emerged from its dark recesses—a dingy kitchen table with scratched and chipped paint of uncertain color and four matching chairs.
Knowing we lacked kitchen furniture, Dolly’s parents had rescued the old set from a corner of their basement and shipped it along with our belongings as a gift. The wooden
bow-back chairs appeared sturdy—and ugly. The grayish table matched the ugly chairs but wobbled precariously on the floor. What a great opportunity to test my skills as Mr. Home Handyman!
A day later the table stood proud and strong, reinforced with spare bed slats, carpenter’s glue, and an assortment of screws and bolts, but still ugly. Paint can perform miracles, and it did so now. The chairs were reborn with green seats and gold rungs, and brush stroke by brush stroke, the drab and dingy table was transformed into a gleaming-green new centerpiece for our kitchen. But still something was lacking—something to signify a new beginning for the table and for us.
We both said at once, “how about an Amish family?”
We had seen the quaint and picturesque, one-horse carriages moving at a steady trot as we whizzed by on country roads in our Ford convertible. Mama in her full-length skirt, long-sleeved blouse and white bonnet sat next to Papa, all bearded, black and buttoned-up, with junior versions of them just visible through the small back carriage window. They must have been used to gawkers like us and always stared straight down the road as if to assure we would not intrude on their secluded way of life.
I started the tabletop portraits with a few hesitant waves of my yellow-tipped brush on the bright green tabletop. First the Amish man with a stern beard, flat-topped hat and straight eyes appeared; then, looking across the table at him, his stout, young wife with
wide, bright eyes and pulled-back hair. The face of the boy came next—serious like his father, but smaller and with uncombed bangs hanging over his forehead. The last face was that of a small girl, resembling the mother with hair pulled back and hanging in pigtails. A family of four in less than an hour. Was this an unconscious prophecy?
We were typical graduate students—broke but confident. We had few entertainment options aside from the companionship of fellow student friends—all low-budget stuff. We visited the Saturday morning pig fairs to buy the rich Amish bakery. We attended student picnics. We spent occasional summer Sundays at Black Moshannan Lake where the tannin-dyed water shimmered like a giant onyx. We sat across from one another at the painted table, like the Amish woman and her husband, for many simple meals before either of the vacant sides was filled.
Dolly took a variety of part time jobs for needed income and diversions from days and nights alone while I completed Masters studies and continued my research for a PhD. She had taught first grade in Milwaukee. Now she was able to substitute teach at McKinley School. She filed books on the stacks at the Penn State library. She clerked at the Green Stamp Store in State College. She did not become pregnant.
We moved from our apartment home into a small house closer to the university. For Dolly’s security and companionship we acquired a Border-collie pup from a nearby farmer. We named her Wiscy, for Wisconsin, and laughed when she would shepherd us around the yard and house, her nose close to the ground, her gentle nips at our heels urging us where she wanted us to go.
A year before we left Penn State we applied to adopt a child, and after agonizing months of waiting and wondering the day finally came when we drove through the mountains to the remote orphanage to claim and bring home our first adopted child, a beautiful infant girl with solemn, dark brown eyes. We named her Martha for her maternal grandmother and nicknamed her Marty for my best army buddy. Wiscy practiced her shepherding and guardianship with her new charge while Marty played safely outside.
The painted table continued to serve in our kitchen after we returned to Wisconsin to work and live, but within a few years we had outgrown it and the first house we owned there. After adopting two more children, Jennifer and Danny, both blond and blue-eyed beauties, Dolly became pregnant. After Kristine was born, dark hair and eyes like her sister, Marty, we moved into a larger home with plenty of bedroom space. We bought a large, modern, hardwood kitchen set. The old green and yellow set took second place status, but we kept it in the breezeway playroom for games and overflow duty with large crowds of company.
The kids sometimes speculated on who the painted people were: “Is that me? Is that Mom? Do you have a hat like that man?”, and they learned a little of our family history in the process.
By the time we moved to Georgia, Marty was married with a baby of her own, and Jenny was attending the University of Wisconsin. Dan and Kris left their childhood friends and schools and moved with Dolly and me to complete their secondary educations
in new schools, with new friends. The old table and chairs, which by now had been chewed by a succession of puppies’ teeth and stained and marred by sundry substances in the performance of duty, moved with us too. That was twenty years ago.
Dan and Kris both found spouses in our adopted state, and each of them has two children. I retired ten years ago after more than 31 years with the same company. Our house, with its woods and creek and backyard pool is a lovely place to live, but it’s a little too much for us, now that Dolly and I live alone again.
For almost fifty years the small Amish family has looked up from the table at a series of new, live faces. It has stood on our back porch in Georgia, and seven grandchildren have continued to play there and eat there for family feasts when the dining room and kitchen were filled with their parents and grandparents.
But there is no room for it in the new house, even though only two chairs remain, repaired and repainted, but still scarred from years of use. Where will they eat and play in our new house, we wonder, what of the memories the table can bring?
“Wait!” I call to the driver, “Wait . . . wait . . . “
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