Repurposing

I love repurposing. How things moved to different spaces take on new significance and service.

It happens with ideas.

An idea that doesn’t fit in one piece of writing, sparks to life in another.

For years, I rolled around a question about how differently we might see ourselves and each other, if we could know about other people’s exact moments of conception—if we knew who came about how.

I thought it was a poem.

It was a poem, for a while. But a bad one. So, I put it away.

But not really. It was still there. Bumping about in my brain, though I’d almost forgotten. Then one day, that idea showed up again—as a story told in the voice of a girl called “Apple,” in a euphemistically-named “family studies” class. And “suddenly”—after years of all-wrong—it sounded right.

Sometimes it happens with words.

Rewriting this novel, some words that just don’t seem to fit, turn out just not to fit where I’d put them. Maybe those words belong in a different chapter. Or in a different character’s mouth. And “suddenly”—after multiple files named “Edit”—they settle snugly in place.

So satisfying.

Like the joy of rearranging furniture.

I’m pretty sure there are just two kinds of people in the world: Oooh-I-wonder-how-that-would-look-over-there?-people and What-are-you-doing?-I-thought-it-was-fine-where-it-was-people. These people should not marry, but they always do. Every time my husband sees me moving furniture, I’m reminded of Stanley Tucci as Mr. Julia Child, encountering the effects of Julia’s culinary zeal.

I love to move furniture around the house. Especially if something familiar can find a new or better use. I am Team Let’s-See-How-It-Looks.

Recently, I moved our tin-top table from the attic bedroom, down to the library.

I can’t recall all the places this table has occupied in my various abodes. I do know that it’s been used as often for a desk as it has been for an eating surface. And I can tell you where it started out—because the table itself holds the record.

Can you see it?

That’s my father’s mother’s writing, on the bottom of the cutlery drawer. It says, Our first piece of furniture, bòt fall 1934 $8.00

I like the table’s new location so much, I’ve spent hours writing there.

I like the view out the window. And knowing that for nearly 90 years, that table’s been in service to our family. Gathering our stories.