Storytelling Sunday - THE Desk

Welcome to Storytelling Sunday (the first Sunday of the month when Sian encourages us to share a story in words and/or photos)! I first recorded today's story on a layout in early 2010. (I originally shared the layout here when my blog was only a month old!) It's one of my first digital scrapbook layouts, created during the Type + Writer class at JessicaSprague.com. The assignment was to tell a story in third person about two people and an object with meaning. It's a different type of journaling than most of my layouts, yet I really like the way it conveys the story of my desk and think it fits perfectly with Sian's 2013 theme of Precious.

This is the story of a girl and her desk . . . Actually it’s about a woman, her daddy, and moving.

Early in the 1990s, a young women sees a for sale ad for a roll top computer desk, solid oak, like new condition. She goes to see the desk and knows it is the one for her. Two thousand dollars later, the desk is hers and her daddy helps move it into her home, upstairs. Luckily the desk comes apart into three large pieces; unfortunately, each piece weighs a ton, especially the roll top.

A few years later, the young woman moves into an apartment with only her personal belongings and the desk. Her daddy moved the desk, relieved it was a downstairs apartment. She buys a twin size bed, makes do with lawn chairs for living room furniture, and uses the desk for paying bills, studying, and eating. The young woman then moves to another house, and later back home to her parent’s house, and then to another apartment, and then to another house, and then to another house . . . . her daddy helps move the desk every time, carefully taking it apart and putting it back together. The desk starts to need a little maintenance each time: toothpicks are inserted in the screw holes so the screws have something to grab onto when they are reinserted, the wooden stops for the pullouts need to be replaced, and the wire mesh at the back of the computer compartment finally falls out. Computers have changed and the CPU no longer fits into its compartment on the roll top but must now go under the desk. She wonders if it’s time to let the desk go, every move the desk gets a little more persnickety and her daddy gets a little tired-er.

But she loves the desk, it is the first real piece of furniture that she acquired as an adult. She knows where everything is and can find a paperclip or new printer ink without having to think about where it might be.  She can’t let it go.

The woman meets a wonderful man and they marry. Her daddy once again takes the desk apart, loads it in the U-Haul, and moves it across the state. Her husband and daddy put the desk together and her daddy says with a smile and sigh, “It’s all yours now son. I’m done moving it.” But, of course, that wasn’t true. Two and a half years later, when the couple moved to another house, her daddy was there helping take the desk apart and put it back together. The last time the desk was moved, the couple hired movers, but her daddy was there to unscrew all the parts of the desk before the movers arrived . . . and her husband put it back together in their new home.

It’s now the year 2010, the desk has a few scratches now and the keyboard drawer is a little crooked, and there’s a deep gouge on the desk top, and some of the slots can’t be used because computer monitors have gotten larger over the years . . .  yet it is still HER desk, THE desk.

It might be three years later, but the story and THE desk are still the same . . . except for that new keyboard tray Robbie had to install last year when the rollers on the old crooked drawer finally gave out!

Thanks for stopping by - be sure to click here to read more stories!