Darkthorn’s Blog

My kitchen table is a worn old beast, covered with scratches and dents. It has been in the family as long as I can remember. It used to have a glass top, but one memorable day my brother dropped a glass of milk on it and it shattered. That family story is where I would like to begin.

When I was younger, I lived on a cattle property in the state of NSW, Australia. Days were hot and long, flavored with flies and stinking weather. Coming into the house and lying my hot face against that table was one of the best things to look forward to. Just as we were sitting down to breakfast, my brother, running out of the kitchen at a far too fast pace, slipped on the linoleum mat and fell. It was as if a stop had happened. We watched in horror as the milk flew out of the glass, the glass itself smashing into the top of the table. There was a horrifying crack, and the top of the table rent open. Dad wasn’t pleased and neither was I. How now was I going to cool my face on those ever long days of heat?

Never the less, life continued, but without the glass top. My parents deemed it too expensive to get a new top for it – the size of the glass was prohibitive in purchasing a professionally cut one.

At age nine, my parents moved our family to Victoria. The old table came with us. The fights we had over fitting it into the moving truck were entertaining, my mattress was left behind in order to make room for its bulk. Our new house was smaller, the doorways hardly big enough to fit the fridge through. In order to get our dining table in, we had to remove a door frame. The effort was worth it because the table was ours, a constant from our old life.

Now the table sits in the kitchen, a piece of furniture by rights too large of the room. It seats us for our Thanksgiving, a custom unfamiliar to the strangers we invite into our home, but also for the universal Christmas. It has seen us break down into tears, the site of many an argument. The news of my grandparents death, my mothers cancer, my future school careers – nothing could be hidden from it.

The best part of our table is the discussions that centre around it. They don’t need to be life changing, just a simple argument over dinner. Who was worse Stalin or Hitler? Stalin, we concluded, he killed more people over all and did worse things to his people. Hitler was targeting only specific groups, not the masses that Stalin put to death. What happens after death? My dad argued for reincarnation, my mom the more simple version of heaven and hell. I decided to go with dad, I don’t know what the table decided. The table received the news of my first boyfriend with calm and compose, nothing like my mother, worried about her little child. Its expanse seems to go on forever, able to absorb the most intolerable of tales. The table has seen study for my exams, a time of blood and tears.

Sadly, it won’t see me next year, when I return to America for my university days. It may not meet my future husband but to be sure, it will eventually, the centrepiece of my life – steady while life is changing rapidly above the surface.

I wrote this as part of my application to the University of Chicago. I was accepted, but they wanted my results from my ACT test. I didn’t have them sent in time, pity, since I did really well on them (32/36).

~ Darkthorn