The desk on which my computer sits and at which I sit to type these vignettes is not a desk at all.  It is a repurposed kitchen table.  In fact, it is the very first kitchen table my young wife and I bought for our very old new home.   It was made of typical gold-colored pine slats with white-painted legs.  That small table served our little family for years.  When the little family became a big family, we needed a larger kitchen table.  The old table was passed from room to room as a desk for various children.  Erin stained the table top a darker brown and painted a green-and-maroon border, with blue flowers on vines in the center.  I thought it was beautiful.  During my six-month exile of separation, I took the table to my construction zone quarters as my writing desk.  I had gathered notes and observations for nearly 20 years, determined to someday write my book.  I had felt compelled for years to write it, but never made the time.  But now a chiding thought nagged at me: You’ve always wanted to write your book.  You will never have a better time to do it.  Now is the time.  So, I got to work.  Nights and weekends I typed up my chicken scratch notes, many written as I walked on Rabbit Lane, elaborated my thoughts, printed and sorted and organized, reassembled and knitted together the stories in chapters, until the manuscript took its first breath as a real creature.  I published the book in 2016, entitling it Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road.  I felt better about this book than anything I had ever accomplished.  I knew I had done it well and had made something beautiful and worthwhile.  As we placed the old kitchen table turned writing desk into the moving truck last month to bring it to my new office at Mom’s and Dad’s house, a leg irreparably broke off.  I was prepared to let the desk go, despite its sentimental value, but while I was at work Dad and a friend sank three long screws to repair the desk for my ongoing writing.  I am hoping one day to prepare new manuscripts of which I can be equally proud.  And I never see those blue flowers in the center of the table without remembering my daughter Erin and her beautiful artistic soul.

My special writing desk.

Writing the Rabbit Lane Memoir manuscript during 2013-2014.