Old Stuff, Part 3: The Dresser

When they moved from Illinois to California in 1954, the year I was born, my parents could fit very little in the U-Haul trailer they pulled behind their Buick station wagon. One of the few items of furniture they brought with them was an oak dresser. It was a solid piece of furniture with birdseye maple drawers (except for the bottom drawer, which was made of cedar and had a hinged cedar cover).

After my father knew that he was dying, he and Mom embarked upon several home improvement projects. I think that Dad, since he couldn’t work, wanted to feel like he was being productive. Unfortunately, one of their projects was to “refinish” and “antique” the beautiful natural wood of the dresser, which meant painting it a hideous color of green, streaking that with a garish gold color, and then applying a coat of shellac which gave everything a sickly yellowish hue. They also spray painted the brass knobs the color gold you see as trim on merry-go-round horses. Yeah, it was awful. But they put the thing back in my brothers’ bedroom and we mostly just forgot about it.

Dad passed away, the boys grew up and moved out, and the dresser was shifted from one home to another. Finally, when I married in 1972, Mom gave me the dresser but made me promise that I would someday refinish it. I had every intention of doing so, but life happens.  Decades later, the dresser ended up in my two boys’ room—still the same awful color it had been since 1963, but also still functioning as a very solid piece of furniture.

Three years ago, when I moved to Mt. Baldy, we put the dresser in the basement on the day I moved in. Space is limited in the cabin, the master bedroom has a beautiful, rosewood-topped built in dresser (thank you, Richard Stutsman) and frankly I was reluctant to move the old green monstrosity into my beautiful new living space.

A week after I moved in it snowed, and a week after that we had pouring rain for hours on end. It wasn’t until several days later that I went looking for something in the basement and discovered that water had leaked (a repair that was supposed to have been completed during escrow) through the ceiling down there and had been dripping for days—right on top of the old green dresser. The wood on the top was peeling up and the drawers were warped and wouldn’t open properly. I was devastated, angry, disappointed in myself for not taking better care of something that had grown in meaning for me with every year of my life. I moved the dresser away from the leaking spot, covered it up, and tried not to think of it.

Two years went by. Last winter, after I put the cabin on the market, I knew I would have to deal with paring down, getting ready to move. I went down to the basement with the intention of breaking the dresser into pieces and taking it to the dumpster. As I examined it, though, I realized it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. The top was ruined, but it was just a thin veneer that could be replaced. The drawers were also finished with veneer and it was that which was warped, not the oak itself. Slowly, painstakingly, I began restoring the dresser, using wood glue to repair in some places, finding wood to cover the top, sanding, painting—and replacing the knobs.

Yesterday my friend Michael came up to visit and I enlisted his help. Together, we brought the green dresser out of the basement and into the bedroom where it belongs. It’s beautiful, I’m proud of the work I did on it (sorry it took so long, Mom!), and it will always be with me, truly the possession of a lifetime.

 

Old stuff, Part I

When my daughter was in junior high, flannel shirts suddenly, for some strange reason, became popular. Shali was stylish and fashionable (unlike her mom), and somehow we ended up buying her a really cool flannel in a sky blue and pale green plaid. The predominant bright blue color brought out the crystal blue in her eyes, and she wore her shirt proudly over various t-shirts. It was such a cool shirt, in fact, that her little brother was known to snag it out of her closet (or off her floor) and sneak it to school in his backpack so he could wear it himself.

Eventually, Shali moved on to other trends in fashion, and the awesome flannel shirt became a cast off. No doubt it would have been donated to Goodwill, but I claimed it. And I wore the heck out of it, throwing it on over t-shirts on cool autumn and spring mornings when I went out to walk the dogs or work in the garden. I loved the soft warmth of it, and wearing it reminded me of an innocent and happy time in my daughter’s life.

She’s 37 now. After I moved to the mountain, the shirt got a lot of wear. But the frequent washings took their toll, and in recent days the fabric has become so worn that the collar has frayed and there is little warmth left in it. I need to discard it. But how can I? With every passing year, it has meant more and more to me, even as its colors have faded, the once plush flannel has become a gossamer version of its once sturdy form.

I feel the same way about a lunchbox the kids gave me many years ago. It was made of a soft, foam-filled vinyl of some kind, and Shali, Ezra, Sam and Jo covered it with their signatures in puff paint to decorate it, then gave it to me when I started teaching. I used and washed the thing so many times that now the vinyl is torn, the foam padding has all but disintegrated. But how can I throw it away? When I mentioned this to my daughter last year, she bought me a new lunchbox—an exact replica of the black metal ‘Thermos’ box my dad used to take with him to work. I love it, and now I use it every day, while the old one sits atop the fridge, collecting dust.

I’m not a hoarder by any means; I’m pretty good about tossing out or donating anything I no longer need or use. But these old things… I have a need for them that transcends utility, and I count them with my most prized treasures.