Table Talk
If your coffee table could talk, what would it say about you?
Some have a living room that feels like a warm welcome. With guests on the way, a coffee table sits in the center, inviting you in with just a few magazines stacked neatly near the middle. There is a freshly burning candle strategically placed away from the magazines, a few glasses of water were set out nearby, or that cup of coffee that was just brewed but quickly forgotten about in the rush to clean the home.
It is, in fact, not always like this. When it is just you, before your friends decide to make their typical unexpected visit, that same coffee table is buried somewhere beneath a pile of unopened mail stained with spilled food atop the half-finished crafting project you were so eager to try after witnessing someone online succeed so greatly on their ‘first try,’ swearing you could recreate it just as flawlessly. The keys that were thrown down the moment you walked in the door, work boots thrown aside before crashing on the couch, the unwashed dishes alongside every electronic item owned.
When it is just you, with nobody to clean for, that table becomes the silent observer of your life, watching while you’re hunched over, staring at your laptop with tired, glazed eyes at all the unfinished homework, pacing back and forth to and from the kitchen. It sits in silence with you while you clear your mind from the long day. It’s there when each and every couch cushion is occupied, and laughter spreads through the house. It is there when you're having a night in, with your comfort show advertised across the television, face mask sloppily smeared on, and that “one drink” that has turned into three. It's there, seeing you make dinner for that special someone for the first time, and when focusing feels impossible compared to the effortlessness it takes to doomscroll for hours.
Your coffee table sees every version of you, the moments you aren't remembering but need to take note of, noticing how every small moment has led to your big milestones, every cup ring left evidence of the rushed morning. The crumbs, the clutter, all evidence of a life well lived.
Maybe every coffee table would speak its own story. Maybe it would be an individualistic teller of what season of life their owner is in, or maybe this is just me trying to find proof of life, not just mundane existence, trying to find appreciation in every imperfection in my space.
