After I moved into my house in South LA, I wanted to move where the movers had placed this incredibly heavy wooden farm table. I wanted it in the kitchen so I could put a desk in the living room. The kitchen was so large and empty without a table. It made more sense to move the farm table there. Gone was all I had witnessed of how many people it had taken to get me to get to this place, and how little physical labor I had done. I didn’t need to be in pain, but sometimes we just can’t sit in the good for as long as we like. We need to push the boulder up the hill. We step backwards in our assertion of our new self a few times before we take the permanent leap forward. We have to be in the fire of our own resistance to see how we hard we make life when we are uncomfortable. My step back was the attempt to move the farm table alone.
The kitchen was a mere five feet away but the table was so heavy even digging in with the glutus maximus muscles I still retain in my middle age, nothing budged. It was a hot summer day, and I was feeling particularly alone in Covid. I didn’t really have anyone to call to help me for free. While many women may immediately call that handyman who said “Call me anytime,” I could not justify having someone come over for a minimum of two hundred dollars to do what I could figure out myself. My favorite motto struck. “I’ll do it myself.”
As an independent woman, not having the brut muscle of a man sucks. You need a man or at least a very strong body building woman in your life when you want to move something heavy or put up blinds (which I get to later as horror show #2.) Wanting a husband to move the damn table was not rational but it came from a place of feeling helpless. I also wasn’t sleeping with anyone, or dating anyone, so that was out of the question. So I wasn’t having sex either which also fueled the desire to roll my sleeves up and dig into a very physical project. I understood later that a tread mill may be a better substitute for pent up sexual frustration.
The top of the 72” long table was loose on the nails from time and age which was a plus. I thought if I could tip the top off, I could then push that as one piece into the next room, and then slide the base. I was elated. After a few treacherous moments defying gravity, the top tipped off and landed with a deafening clatter on the floor, but it was off! I dragged it into the kitchen, and then moved the now considerably lighter base. Then I looked at the two monstrous pieces apart and my heart went into my throat. How was I planning on lifting the top back onto the base? May I add, I have no knowledge of engineering or pullying or what one would need to know from MIT to create a leverage point. I am more of a stack step stools in heels to change a light bulb kind of gal.
I tried to create a leverage effect with two rather rickety kitchen chairs and was really impressed with my solution UNTIL it came time to slide the table top fully on the base. The nails that go in the preset holes in the base kept catching on the wood, and then when I would get one in, then the other ones wouldn’t be lined up and I would have to pull the table off the nail and try and shimmy it while applying force to get all the holes. Over and over and over, the table would have a nail land in one hole and not another. I was sweaty, stinky, and angry and under the table base (again dangerous positioning) pushing the table up with my feet while trying to line all the nails into the holes… while continuously saying to the table “Go in goddamn it. Just go in goddamn it.” Which turned into “Why won’t you do in godamn it.” To simply “fuck” alternated with some whimpering and a whole list of why I am who I am in life and alone and here under a table braless in a slightly yellowing wife beater t-shirt.
I gave up a few times. I would walk in circles around the living room pumping myself up like a middle weight contender. “You can do this. You can do this. You don’t need a man for this. You can do this.” And I would march in and apply all the same methods because I was out of methods both geometrically and logically, and I had to keep just hoping just in one instance it would work. I was yelling and crying and pleading with the table….!!! And then.
Shouk.
Yep. That’s the sweet sound the table made as all the nails aligned and the top went in to the base. I get emotional just writing about the victory. I half couldn’t believe it and half was so elated I did it. I was caught between victory and absolute exhaustion. I laid under the table for about five minutes alternating between crying and laughing.
The ending was happy, but what if the ending wasn’t happy? How would I have treated myself the rest of the day? Would I think I was an absolute shithead? Would I have broken down and called someone? The table could have ruined my day (or stayed off the base until someone came over man, woman or child to help.) I understood in succeeding I gave myself a sense of security that I could take care of myself, I didn’t need anyone and life was hard as fuck. But I also tortured myself. The table was like the last hurrah to that mentality of I want to do this now, regardless of the odds against me for stuff that the energy was wasted on. Yes, use that energy when going for a contract, or a publisher, or taking a risk with someone you love. Farm tables, they can be for someone else. I had to start to let go of the small term results and keep my eye on the big results. Or how about more gentle self love? My time in this house would be a series of pushing forward to step back, evaluating my own operating manual. I would muscle and hustle and get a great satisfaction from my manual while also rewriting it. Am I avoiding what I need to look at in my life with this drill? Do I look like a lunatic in these gardening gloves with this saw? While commendable, these actions also made me connect with a sense of being vastly alone and fallible.