Ashes to Ashes

My friends and family have always considered me a bit of a pyromaniac. I am quite fond of candles, fireplaces, a chimenea, tiki torches and bonfires. So far I haven't burned down a house or anything.

Yesterday I built a cleansing fire. I gathered a lot of junk from around the house. Old clothes even the charity thrift store wouldn't dare sell were tossed into a pile. Television boxes and other assorted cardboard junk harboring mold and mildew in the storage shed were stacked. A couple old chairs, so broken there was no hope of repair, were dragged out of the pantry and put into the burn pile. It was a nice fire.

I was watching the fire from the back porch and noticed a table I have had for 30 years at least. It started as a small vanity table in my bedroom when I was about 6 or 7 years old. Over the years it was alternately used as a desk, a plant stand, a foyer catch-all, bill-paying station, and even a breakfast table. The years had not been good to this table. It was cheap and spindly from the beginning, and time only added to the wobbles, cracks and decay. The boards that were joined together to form the bean-shaped top had started to separate, but over the years I'd just add another coat of paint and fill in those cracks and pretend it was as good as new.

Of course it was not as good as new, which was why its job at the moment was on the back porch supporting a small fountain and assorted cans and bottles of insect repellent, wasp poison and charcoal starter fluid. It didn't live in the house anymore because it just wasn't any good. My husband had suggested ditching the table multiple times, but I always refused. I'd always had the table. I couldn't let it go. Until yesterday.

My fire was dying down and I hated for it to end, so I looked at the table. No doubt it would burn like a Guy Fawkes dummy. It was time for it to go. I got the table and tossed it off the porch. A leg broke off it upon landing and the small drawer popped out. I easily snapped the other rickety legs off and then tossed it all onto the remains of the fire. In a moment it caught. For a nanosecond I felt a surge of panic. My table! But then while I watched the latex of a dozen paint jobs blister and bubble and shrink away I wondered why I had waited so long. This table was symbolic of all the useless, sentimental clutter that keeps me bogged down. And now it was going up in smoke.

It was very satisfying to burn that table. It had served its purpose in the world. Done. I burned more things today. I liked it.