China Cabinet

.



The glass doored cabinet is dark walnut, the most intricately designed piece of furniture in my room. It looks rich, gleaming in the spotlight that shines from my desk. I’d always thought it huge, but it isn’t really, about five feet tall, four feet wide, and maybe fourteen inches deep. The glass has curving wood grill work over it, and the wood beside the door has a curvy design carved into it, stained darker than the rest of the piece. There’s a drawer across the bottom of the cabinet, with a bird’s eye maple panel in it, pearly waves making it look three dimensional. A deeply carved bar spans the bottom of the front, and carved spindle legs, a curving cross piece, and a round onion dome spindle, purely decorative, in the center, down where few people would ever look. This is the one piece of furniture I kept when Mom died, the last piece left of a dining room suite I’d grown up with. As a little girl, my job was to dust and polish the suite, the heavy table, the leather covered chairs, the large buffet, and this china cabinet. I loved rubbing polish on all those carved legs, and spent enough perfectionist time at it to know every curve and cranny, every woodgrain surface. The underneath of that table was my private forest, one of my safe places where no one else would go. When Mom moved from her apartment into the seniors’ residence, we thought the whole suite would have to be sold, but the person we hired to help her move suggested she keep the one piece. So now it’s mine, this rococo bit of my childhood, at home in my cluttered cave.




.