Member-only story
It’s More Than The Kitchen Table
Our 2020 vision needs to be bigger than that.
There is a towering silver-trunked crepe myrtle, a much-loved tree in Austin and in Texas, outside my kitchen window. I see it from where I sit at a caramel-colored cherrywood drop-leaf with carved legs and a lovely sheen. A table perfect in its beauty but also its function, expanding with leaves to seat eight. I remember the thrifter’s glee I had when I hunted it down from an ad on Craigslist and saw it sitting unassumingly in the seller’s den. Back then, I was always looking for a find, having quit my fifty hour a week mid-level marketing job to spend more time with our kids. I thought saving money was my best contribution to our finances.
Now, children grown, it’s usually only me here, eating muesli and writing. The table is still lovely, still simple and sensible under my window. But it sits in a house that reflects my privilege. Now I can afford to buy something more impressive or expensive. I am not as I was those years ago, stretching every dollar.
When the table first came to my house, I voted, of course. I was all over the aisle, swerving from Democrat to Republican, only slightly paying attention to governors and congressmen and women, even to presidents. At the time, my concerns, heavy and constant, were for the little people — my first-hand treasures — seated at my second-hand…
