My Dad bought me my blue desk. I'm pretty sure it was 1986, and I was twelve years old. I had recently moved into my own room--the back bedroom that had been Mom's sewing room/storage room, and I was still working out the kinks. My sister Jessica was born. Emily and Bekah shared the big bedroom. And Mom and Dad came back from a yard sale one morning, and Dad said to me, "We bought you a desk."

I want to say it cost $50. It was, in truth, my first piece of furniture that was well and truly mine and not the family's. And I claimed it wholeheartedly.

It was painted a really... interesting mint green color, the same color, in fact, that the cherry rope bed I have upstairs was painted. I think it was milk paint, actually. And someone made my desk; it's solid wood, very heavy, and someone put a lot of work into it. There once were little tabs of paper taped under every cubbyhole, but they've fallen off over the years. There are still faint pencil markings where a long-ago owner wrote what belonged in that cubbyhole.

I set up that desk using an old wooden chair that was painted green (the chair later fell apart--literally. I saved the back of it for a while, but I haven't seen it lately, so I probably don't have it anymore.) and set my typewriter up on my new desk. That summer, I typed out Wizards of Despair, Book 1 (go ahead and laugh at my title) and submitted it to a young adult writing contest.

I spent a lot of time at my desk, and wrote countless stories and novels at my desk. For a while, my python Fester's cage was on top of my desk; later on, I replaced the typewriter with a word processor, and then a computer. And I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I found a new chair, the same one I'm sitting in now.

When I moved out of my parents' house, I left my desk behind, intending to come back for it, and it sat in my old room for a while. That's when my sister Jessica wrote "Jessica waz here*" on it. I remember getting mad at her for that.

My desk never made it to Columbus. Instead, I returned to my parents' house, and when we decided to paint the back bedroom for the first time since we moved in, I decided that I would paint my desk. I'd never been fond of the mint green color. So I sponge painted dark blue over the desk--just one color--and it blended with the mint green to be almost purple in places, and very pretty.

Here is a picture from my old room at my parents' house when I got my computer in 2004:


When I moved out of my parents' house to this house, my blue desk came with me. It ended up in my office/craft room, but when I moved my computer downstairs two years ago, it didn't come with me. It's rather top heavy, you see, and also very awkward to carry. And it's solid. So I made do with the rolltop deskbottom until I couldn't take it any longer. Now my desk is down here, in place, and we're getting used to each other again.

If I am ever a famous author (haha), this is the desk that helped spawn all of my story ideas. This is that desk. And now, I feel as if my writing 'office' downstairs--where it will stay forevermore--is truly complete.




*I think Jess thought she was being cute, misspelling 'was'.

Comments

Grey Walker said…
What neat memories. And what a beautiful desk.

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