2002-04-01-10:13 p.m.

I like old things.

I like the old white desk that came from my grandmother. I put my computer on it. It doesn't have a little slide-out shelf for the keyboard, but I've been using it for my computer for a couple of years now and I've never gotten any kind of muscle cramps or anything. It's got a thick coat of white paint on it and the paint is chipped in lots of places. My grandmother added a formica top and cut a chink out of the top right-hand corner. That's where my mouse cord goes. My grandmother used to use the desk for her sewing machine. My mother remembers it from when she was little. She says they used to call it "the machine." Like, "I think I saw that on the machine, why don't you go look there?" My grandmother made all my school dresses on this desk when I was a little girl. My sister and I were the best-dressed girls in school. I remember that I would come home from school and I'd see their Airstream travel trailer in the driveway and I'd get all excited. I'd run in the door and see lots of beautiful new dresses hanging everywhere in the dining room. Now when I sit here I can think about how my grandmother used to sit here and sew so my sister and I could feel beautiful.

I like my card catalog. I guess I'm the only person I know who actually has a card catalog in her house. It's one of my VERY favorite things. I bought it at a silent auction when the library sold all its furnishings before moving into a new building with brand new, junky, cheap furnishings. This piece of furniture is the most solid, well-built thing I own. The drawers slide smooth as silk and there are thirty - THIRTY - of them. I've had it for a year and still don't have all the drawers filled yet. One has seeds. One has markers and tape and pencils and erasers and scissors. (The kids know that one.) Another has sewing stuff. No, wait, I think there are two or three that have sewing stuff. One has all the kids' old Awana patches in it, so maybe we don't have to buy as many next year. One has those little videotapes. One is Benjamin's. He doesn't like anyone to know, but he keeps some of his Bionicle pieces in there. It is the most fun in the world to know that I have empty places just waiting to be filled with whatever I want to fill them with. And it's fun thinking that all my kids played with those drawers while we waited to check out our books from the old library.

I like old silver spoons and forks. I would probably love old silver knives, too, but I don't have any. I find old silverware at garage sales sometimes, but I got a very nice surprise the other day when my mom and dad brought me some of my other grandmother's old spoons. They're really old. So old that all the silver is rubbed of in places. But I like that. I like how they're heavy, too, how when you hold one you know you've got something in your hand. I like how they look, all scratchy-shiny, like, well, we used to be new and REALLY shiny, but now we're worn and loved like the velveteen rabbit. I like how I probably used one of those spoons when I was at my Granny's house. How I probably used one of them to stir my Tang. (We always made a glass of Tang as soon as we walked in the door.) I like how I might have had one of them by my favorite plate when we ate chicken and dumplings. I hated chicken and dumplings, but I loved the way none of the plates matched and I always got the one I liked best.

I like my old teddy bear. I got him when I was about seven. He's been my pal for a long time. He's missing a lot of hair, especially on his seams, and what hair he has left is all matted and short like worn out carpet. There is still one place under his right ear that has a little bit of hair that's soft like it must have been when he was new. I like to touch that spot and imagine how he used to be, but I like him being old. He has a bare circle on his back about the size of a quarter and it has a hole in the middle where a key to his music box used to go. The key is gone, but his music box is still in him. I can feel it hard and square inside him. I don't know what song it used to play. I like to think that one day I will get a key and put it into my teddy bear's music box and wind it up and see what his song is. I wonder if hearing it will give me back something that I may have lost when I was a little girl. Someday I will do that. But for right now I just like knowing that I can do that someday, any time I want.

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