Yesterday we gave our Ethan Allen dining room set to a worthwhile charity. Next week, my husband and I will be married for 31 years. We bought that dining set a few years into our marriage. It was one of our first “major, significant” purchases of our marriage. And honestly, this set signified so much more than just a table and chairs and a place to eat. It was paid for by one of my husband’s first bonuses from work and it cost almost the entire bonus. It was one of those moments that I knew that my husband’s chips were all in, on me and our children. We were “it” for him.
We took our dining room set to four different houses, in three different states. We hosted on it, countless Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving dinners and other various celebrations along the way. Although the set was made of top quality solid wood and we were generally careful with it, like us, it was definitely showing its age. It had a fair number of scratches (and I could have named most of their occurrences) and as the kids grew up and out, it became more of a “catch all” than any part of a fine dining experience. In our current house, the dining room is a 12 foot square, and so the long rectangular shape of the table, always felt somewhat teetering on its edge, when all of its leaves were in it. (Sometimes, I would worriedly envision the Thanksgiving Dinner plunging to its untimely demise, since our dining room is two steps up from the main floor) And while the dining table was a simple, traditional style, it wasn’t old enough to be considered “mid-century” style. In short, it was hopelessly out of place and outdated.
And so yesterday, we gave away our Ethan Allen dining room set to a worthwhile charity. And today I am reflecting on what it represented to me: love, generosity, quality, celebration, abundance, memories, solidity, constancy, reliability, artistry and craft. Despite contrary belief, sometimes it is the “things” that point you to what matters. If life is nothing else, it is a nuance.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.