When a Table Isn’t Just a Table

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I’m an extremely nostalgic person. You know that app, Timehop, where you can relive your memories in pictures from this day in years past? The creators of that app made it for me, whether they realize it or not.

The Background

Just over two years ago, we moved our bed from the wall in our room without a window to the adjacent wall, right in front of one of the windows. We did this because after I gave birth, I would need a bigger bedside table for my pumping accouterments and the table we had didn’t fit with our previous furniture arrangement. 

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the new situation (what if a tree falls through the window and onto our heads while we’re sleeping and kills us?). In addition to being nostalgic, I’m also a worrier, but I NEEDED my table. It came in handy, especially because I ended up pumping for 15 months for my twin girls. 

The table was four feet long and I used every inch for my pump, flanges, extra milk bottles and nipples for feeding, and of course my own snacks and water. Sometime after that 15 months was over, however, the table no longer became a necessity, and I still just couldn’t bring myself to move it. It was a clutter-gatherer. I moved my pump over, but that was still sitting there too. Why was my pump still there? Why could I not move that darn table?

Logic vs. Nostalgia

We are getting new windows in our house. The originals are from 1979 and basically work about as well as a sieve for keeping drafts at bay. I need to move my bed to get at that window behind it. In order to move my bed, the table has to go. And now as I’m sitting here on my bed with an empty space next to me writing this stream-of-consciousness post in the Notes section of my phone, I am sad. I’m not sad I moved the ugly table that has been next to my bed for over two years. I’m sad I don’t have little babies anymore. I’m sad that part of my life is over. Through the clutter and the crazy, the being up all night, and the 15 months of pumping, that table meant something to me. But I have to move on. I have to enjoy what today has brought me. I need to let the baby stage go.

As I sit here, on the verge of tears that I don’t get to relive that past two years over and over and over again for the rest of my life (because honestly, I think I would), I hear my son playing outside, I see flowers blooming on the trees, and I know that my two 2-year-old tornadoes are asleep in the next room. To everyone else, that table was just a table. It was ugly (although I did cover it with a pretty tablecloth), too big, and totally unnecessary at this point in my life. To me, that table held my memories of long overnights giving my milk to my babies.

A Realization

As I moved my table, I saw a few milk droplets I must have missed the last time I cleaned under there. My husband came in since I couldn’t move the bed by myself and was excited to have the table gone. I told him it made me sad, and my son immediately got it. He said, “It has the memories, Dada.”

I moved that table today. By myself. And I realized something: Yes, maybe I thought it was my table that had the memories, but my memories will always be with me. I’m just lucky enough to be able to make new ones every day. Hey, and there’s always Timehop, right?

Do you have a “table?” How did you feel when you had to move it? Or have you?

 

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charity
Charity is a newly-single mom of three with a son born in 2012 and identical twin daughters born in 2017. She lives in Monroe and has been writing for Fairfield County Mom since 2019. Charity is a full-time speech-language pathologist, working with patients all across the lifespan. She is also an intuitive medium. In her life before children, Charity was a professional stage manager, working in theatres throughout Fairfield County. Charity is passionate about her family, career, ballet (which she began at 39 years old!), musical theatre, and her amazingly-supportive friends as she begins a new chapter in her life. She firmly believes that you are never too old to stay stuck in a situation that is causing you pain. You can follow her on Instagram at @charityferris.

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