The Table

by

Kat Warren

In my study, there’s a table I use as a desk. My computer sits more or less in the center, dominating untidy stacks of books, bills and other ballyhoo. I’m sitting there now, tapping the keyboard  alongside a window that looks out on a garden rife with spring  blossoms. This table, with its nicked corners, hapless gouges and other  scars, has been in my various homes since 1971 when I liberated it  from my parents’ house in New Orleans where they moved after Dad and Mother retired from the Panama Canal Company.

Before that, the table lived literally under the house at 878 Morgan  Avenue in the town of Balboa in the Panama Canal Zone. In Panama,  “under the house” didn’t mean the cellar. There are no cellars in  coastal Panama and if there were they’d be called ponds. Many houses,  including ours, were built on pillars to allow air to circulate  underneath, thereby cooling the house (in theory). It was a standard  part of one’s home, one open to the air (on three sides in our case  since 878 was built into a hill with jungle across the street). “Under the house” accommodated Dad’s shop, a storeroom, the laundry  area, Mother’s robin-egg blue Ford Falcon and a lounging area  furnished with overstuffed bamboo armchairs surrounded by Mother’s  potted-plant collection. It was my job to water those plants so I knew  them well—begonia, croton, spider plant, sword plant, hibiscus, ferns,  coleus, succulents, philodendron, caladium, bromeliads orchids and  other epiphytes.

It’s that lounging area that lends provenance to this table. We  referred to it as the “mahogany table” but I’m doubtful there’s any  mahogany in it (my parents might exaggerate when they weren’t  downright gullible). I adopted this table and made it mine. I did my homework at it, and I did quite a lot of reading there  too. Dad  rigged a big wooden frame above the table, then draped a  double large mosquito net over it so I could work or read at night unplagued by squadrons of flying insects. No one bothered me under the house and it was deliciously quiet. The  surrounding gardens shielded me from observation and scented the night air: lime and guava trees, bamboo orchids, palms, oleander, wood roses  and coffee roses (neither proper roses), gardenias, hibiscus,  firecracker bush, bougainvillea, brugmansia, shrimp plant, frangipani,  elephant ears, spider lily, ginger lily, birds of paradise, poinciana,  jasmine, and more. During my teen years that table under the mosquito net saw a bit of snogging, too.

Time passed and I went to college which meant “going to the States.” The Canal Zone wasn’t a place where you could just hang around as an  adult, however young.  It was a company town and you either went “back  to the States” (although most of us never had lived there), usually  for college, or you got a job with the sole employer, the Panama Canal  Company, which didn’t have many openings for people without college  degrees.

After I left, Dad took down the mosquito net since no one any longer wanted to sit  at the table at night.  Sometimes he and Mother ate lunch at the table  but, mostly, it gathered dust and layers of insect corpses. I never lived with my parents again, but I was at their New Orleans home as often as not. The table was in their guest room where I sometimes spent the night. It had no real function there so I  assumed my parents intended the “guest room” to be my room. It took some time but I finally worked up the courage to ask for the  table.  By then I was living in a generously-apportioned apartment on Elysian Fields Avenue and scavenging any bit of furniture I could. I  really wanted that table. I expect Dad and Mother wouldn’t have let  me have it had they known I was sharing that apartment with the man I would  marry but with whom I then was living in luscious sin. So they said yes. And the table has  been with me ever since.

It has been part of my life for most of my life. As my desk  it’s kept me on track with friends, family and finances.  It’s my  history in wood and in word, so to speak if one counts the  contraptions that have rested on it in aid of producing my words:

1941 Underwood manual typewriter
Smith-Corona portable electric typewriter
IBM Selectric typewriter
The first Macintosh (128K)
Macintosh Quadra
Hewlett-Packard PC
Dell Dimension PC

This table, witness to most of my wordy life, now resides in my study. I repair to it nightly when I commune with the Internet, work from  home, do household business, scribble a bit and use e-mail to stay in  touch with family and friends. I grant you it’s a little large to be a  lucky charm or a touchstone but it proffers continuity and is a  comforting presence that  serves a purpose as … my desk. Maybe it’s my  personal altar. It feels that way, sometimes.
 

Kat Warren is a corporate librarian in Northern California who lives with a fuchsia hybridist, their two elderly cats and too many books to count. Her preferred exercise workout is turning the pages of a good tome whilst guzzling champagne. She loves Bach (particularly the unaccompanied cello suites), beaches, books and a good bacchanal now and again. Kat can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it