The Wobbly Table

Everyone has at least one thing in their life that is always there!

You know what I mean, that bowl you always dump your keys in, that weird shell that lives on the top of the bathroom cabinet, the cuddly toy that somehow made its way onto your bed and you can’t bear to part with it, things that are part of our lives but we often forget all about them. It is not until the bowl cracks or the shell falls off the cabinet and shatters on the floor that we realise how much we take certain things in our lives for granted.

For me it was a bedside table, I had had it for years loaded with face creams, odd earrings, diaries, journals, books and all sorts of other necessaries. To be honest I forgot what it actually looked like, I knew it was there through various bleary eyed mornings reaching to wallop my alarm clock or for the life saving sip of Irn Bru the morning after the night before. But then one evening that all changed, I was woken suddenly by the strangest sound. It was the noise a branch makes just before it breaks off the tree. I got up and looked out at the tree outside my window, nothing there but the creaking sound got worse. The next thing an almighty crash, my beside table dumped its load of bits and pieces all over the floor. Bottles of nail varnish, my book, night cream plus goodness knows what else all tumbling over my carpet. A table leg had given way and my poor wee table just could not hold on any longer. I picked everything up and examined the damage, it had totally split and even my various attempts at propping it up were all in vain. The next few mornings and nights were very strange. Nothing that I tried worked, no pile of boxes or towers of magazines worked, my wee table that I took for granted was gone and it felt irreplaceable.

It took me about a week before I stopped reaching out to sit my coffee mug on, to fumble for the beside light and having to reach down to thump my alarm clock just was not working. I tried everything to fix my wee table but to no avail, not even a skilled joiner could help, the wood was too badly split. So it was time to say goodbye, my four-legged friend was no more.

But that is the next problem with something that is always there, saying Goodbye and getting used to it not being around. When we come to depend on that bowl being there to put our keys in, we can feel totally lost when we leave our keys somewhere else and cannot find them.

So do I just go out and buy another table? Well, this may sound silly but that would be weird. Ikea or B and Q would just not cut it, my wee table had so much history with me, it had moved several times and seen the back of  many vans, to replace it would be unthinkable. So I will just need to get used to it not being there and get used to the fact that when I sleepily reach for my glasses I won’t find them.

The moral of this Blog my friends, take nothing for granted because the one day you reach for it, it might not be there anymore