Have a Seat
Last summer, Joel's grandmother Mar gave us a set of lichen-encrusted adirondack lawn chairs. Mar's chairs had happily weathered Nebraska prairie summers beneath a fruit-bearing tree for the last decade. The chairs were uprooted from their cozy spot on Mar's little farm to our front lawn in Vermillion after she decided to move. When we moved last week, the adirondacks made the long trip from South Dakota to Minnesota. They've found a temporary home ringing my parents' backyard fire pit and a revived look under my dad's power washer and Joel's steady hand.
During our courtship, Joel refurbished an ancient picnic table for me one summer when we lived in Minneapolis. The picnic table had been salvaged from the dump by Molly during Brookings annual Clean-Up Days in the early 1980s and sat for years in the Mirons' backyard enjoying many outdoor feasts, its peeling paint and warped boards often hidden by a tablecloth. Joel and I saved the table from another curbside sale and hauled it to my apartment in Minneapolis. After Joel refurbished the table, using tools loaned from a traveling theatre company (Joel performed the part of Sebastian in Shakespeare's The Tempest that summer), the Mirons' old picnic table was transformed into my dining room table. And until recently, it was our primary table, seeing scores of meals, birthdays, dinner parties, batches of cookies, craft projects, and homework in its 10-year lifespan. I have many memories in which that table serves as a centerpiece to all the action of my young life.
It seems to be our thing - recycling old, worn furniture, stabilizing it for another 10 or 20 years use. It's kind of fun to take a scabbed-over, wobbly thing, add a little elbow grease, and make a little heirloom out of it.
I wonder what fun times the new-used adirondacks will afford us?