The Weight of Inherited Furniture

When my mother died, my brother and I divided her things over a long weekend. Most of it was easy. Then we came to the dining table, a massive walnut thing that had been her mother's, that neither of us had room for and neither of us could bear to sell.

It is in my living room now, taking up most of it. I eat at it alone most nights. Some evenings I resent it. Other evenings I run my hand along the scratch my grandfather made moving it in 1958, and I understand that I am not its owner so much as its current custodian.

Objects outlive us. That is both their burden and their gift.