Daughter Sets Table For a Life Of Her Own

For years, it was the "divorce table."

My friend Carolyn gave it to me in the summer of 1994, only days after my young daughter and I had moved into a duplex to start our new lives as a single-parent family.

"Do you need a kitchen table?"

I needed just about everything, and so the pride that would normally force a shake of my head surrendered to a nod.

"We've got a table we don't need," Carolyn said. "It was my sister's 'divorce table.' It's old, and it needs paint, but it's solid and has two chairs. If you want it, it's yours."

It was a scarred but solid rectangle, and the perfect size for our breakfast nook. Caitlin and I painted the table and chairs bright white and replaced the worn-out seat fabric with cheery white-and-yellow stripes. (Our one regular luxury was a blue pitcher of flowers in the center of the table.)

For two years, the divorce table was the center of our home life. We ate breakfast there every morning, and dinner most nights. Cait did her homework there while I paid the bills or typed on my laptop. In one of my favorite photos of her from that time, she sits at the table in her school jumper, her head tossed back in laughter.

Over time, our kitchen filled. We exchanged high-fives after assembling a wooden trolley to hold pots and a microwave. We designed a pantry with two tall, skinny shelf towers my son, Andy, put together during a visit from college. We bought a variety of pretty plates and bowls and two rag rugs, and agreed on the drive home that matching dinnerware was way overrated.

When we moved to a larger duplex, we bought a new round table to match the trolley. The divorce table ended up in my office. For the next nine years, our kitchen stayed the same. Then I remarried, and all of my kitchen furniture went into the basement — until last month, when Cait moved into her own half of a duplex with two college friends.

"This?" she said, pointing to the trolley.

I nodded, and kept nodding as she pointed to the shelf towers, the round table and chairs, the flowery dishes from the discount store.

I pointed to the divorce table with raised eyebrows.

"No," she said. "You keep it." I patted the table in sympathy.

I waited two weeks to visit her newly furnished apartment. Maybe I was giving her a little space. Maybe I was the one who needed breathing room after she told me about a visit from an old high school friend.

"She walked into my kitchen and said it felt just like our old home," Cait said, laughing into the phone.

My kitchen, she said.

Her kitchen, I thought.

A few days later, I rang my daughter's doorbell for the first time. Immediately, I noticed that our worn-out sofas looked gleefully unfamiliar in their brand new slipcovers. The dining room table around the corner was a hand-me-down from a generous mother of three who sees my babysitting daughter more than I do.

Cait waved me into the kitchen, grinning.

The two rag rugs were in their familiar spots on the floor. Our flowery dishes were stacked in the cupboard. On the counter, a single clean coffee cup rested in our old drain board. The trolley was back on duty, holding a microwave and pots. The kitchen table was a perfect fit in her breakfast nook. The shelf towers were already packed with her favorite foods.

Everywhere I looked, I saw memories of my daughter's childhood, starting their new life right along with hers, as if they had all agreed it was time to move on.

Well, how about that? My biggest prayer was answered, the one I recited as I walked the floors at night, a ghost haunting my own house. My daughter has prevailed over all of my mistakes, my every misstep. And, silently but adamantly, she has made her stand: There is no room — in her home, or in her life — for a table meant for endings.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… And His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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