Sold...a little piece of my heart

About 20 years ago now, I was driving through Grosse Pointe Farms and saw a sign for an estate sale. With a little time on my hands, I parked my car to see what I could discover. Being the last day of the sale, most things were picked through already and the seller was desperate to unload what was left.

With no dining room furniture to speak of in my new home, I was interested in the dining room suite. There was a table that without leaves would seat six, but with all three leaves that came with it, could comfortably fit twelve. Included was a buffet, china cabinet, six chairs and if I'd consider buying it, the seller would throw in a pedestal drum table with a leather top. All of it was in the worst possible condition imaginable, but, imagine I did. I saw it restored to glory in my mind's eye, plopped down $500 for the lot of it and considered myself blessed. Most of my friends and family thought I'd lost my mind and couldn't possibly see what this mess of wood could become in the hands of the right artisan.

Several years later, we finally had enough money to have it all professionally restored. The process seemed to take forever, during which time I visited the project to see these pieces many times. I saw them all looking raggedy and wretched--little better than potential kindling. I saw them stripped to expose their glorious original woods which included poplar, mahogany and some walnut. I visited again to choose stains which tormented me, but finally, though my house had a lot of natural oak, I threw caution to the wind and chose a rich cherry red stain. My last visit to the shop was to select the fabric used to recover the chairs.

After many months, the pieces were returned to me and were absolutely stunning. What others plainly couldn't see during the early days of the sale, became my gain.

And now, it's my loss.

Our new home is way too small to house a dining room suite the size of this one. It's all too much for the confines of a 1,200 square foot home. Sometime late last summer, we had an estate specialist and antique dealer come to our home to appraise and then list the set on his website and two nights ago, someone must have seen what I saw and clicked the purchase button.

Sold. Just like that, I lost all of my dining room furniture and a little piece of my heart.

I have so many memories of the family meals we've shared around that table, like the year we bought my husband a set of utensils that extended three feet. That Christmas night, with all the leaves in spanning the distance between my husband and my father, my husband extended his fork and stole a piece of food off my dad's plate. The picture in my mind of my husband's boyish glee and my father laughing because he never expected food theft will forever be in my heart. It wouldn't have been the same without all that space between them.

I can recall the last meals, too. Christmas dinner of 2001 was the last one we shared with my dad. For Thanksgiving 2004, my mom, still so sad at the holidays, sat with my best friend and mourned. It was my friend's first holiday without her daughter. The two of them told stories, laughed, cried and polished off more than one bottle of wine. My mother, sitting next to Fannette, had a magical never empty wine glass and the rest of us spent the night mopping up tears. Though sad, it's a precious memory.

As I polish the pieces and prepare them for someone new to love, I find myself feeling a little bereft. It's not really the lustrous wood, or the grand pedestal legs of the table, or heart backed chairs I'll miss most...it's the opportunity to make more memories like these because most of the people who helped to make them so special are now gone from us.