Goodbye Grace

I'll miss every quirky curve of that old oak buffet.

I had no idea a person could get so attached to a piece of furniture. This week I had to say goodbye to an old oak buffet and ended up, well, a little verklempt. My beloved spouse, Professor Biker, sold it online at that best thing since garage sales: Craig’s List.

I don’t mean to imply that I wasn’t on board with the transaction. But I can take no credit for it. He spent the afternoon taking glamour shots of its tongue-in-groove construction from all angles before moving on to shooting other hardy, mid-century items in our motley furniture collection.

Why I cried, I’m still not sure. The buffet hadn’t been in our family for long. I did get it from my Aunt Grace. But I think she picked it up at a neighborhood estate sale, then enlisted it as her bedroom dresser until she could afford a real suite. All this editing of “stuff” is for a greater purpose; we’re moving it all from our lives to someone else’s so we can make room for something new.

I guess it’s remembering the beverages that buffet served up for chatty college cast parties or imagining all it’s seen and heard of raucous book club gatherings and apres ski brunches with sisters and brothers, aunts, uncles and cousins.

So at the appointed pick-up hour, all I did was stand there, somewhat helpless, as the friendly couple who came to take it rubbed at the water stain on the top and described the new handles that would replace the off-period ones we never got around to change.

“What was your aunt’s name,” the buffet’s new owner asked me. Turns out she gets kind of sentimental with furniture too. She’s going to call it “Grace.”