My desk is inherited from my grandfather, my grandmother having bought it for him in 1955 when it was already an antique. I have no idea how old it is, but the leather top is intact, and the wood burnished to an aged gloss, wear showing around the drawer handles where many hands over many years have pulled them open and shut. When the desk first made it into my office, I could still faintly smell my grandfather’s pipe as small bits of tobacco were caught between the leather top and its wood surround. Now that smell is completely gone, and I am left only with an image of him sitting at this piece of furniture writing his memoirs, his letters to friends and acquaintances around the world, and playing his nightly game of solitaire.
He would be puzzled by the computer that now sits on the desktop as well as by the printer. And perhaps be somewhat disappointed that it is not as neat as it was in his day. But it is not the desk that shows the difference between his generation and mine. I may have one desk, but I have two desk chairs. One of these is his chair, a low backed black affair with gold trim and an eagle, also in gold, imprinted on its back. The arms of the chair are worn down to plain wood, the paint having disappeared over years of use.
But while I sit at his desk, his chair resides in a corner for my occasional visitor. I sit at a modern leather (probably pleather) chair that is high-backed, cushioned, and supposedly ergonomically engineered. That being a word that would not have been in my grandfather’s vocabulary. He found his chair perfectly comfortable and spent many hours working while sitting in it. Today we would disdain this chair as uncomfortable and perhaps dangerous to our posture and health.
But while I do not use his chair, I treasure it along with his desk as a memory of a person who was so important in my life. I may be ergonomically correct, but I also hope I can aspire to embrace his qualities of honor, courage, kindness, intelligence and faithfulness --- all the qualities that his desk represents to me every day.