John Shibley

Maine

My father is an antique dealer and auctioneer, and so our home, while modest in many ways, often had extraordinary objects in it. As a child I ate my meals off a marble top table. At the time, it seemed like an enormous slab of marble - maybe 7 feet by 4, and it was white and cool, and my father remarked often enough about it's uniqueness that I noticed it then and remember it now. It became my source of familial pride - we didn't have a second house at the shore, but I ate dinner off a marble top table, so there.

When the divorce happened, my father moved out. One day we came home and found that the marble top table had disappeared. In its place was a cheap kitchen set. The table was blue, and it rocked on two shiny tubular legs. It was too small for the dining room.

My mother didn't fight my father for the marble top table. She didn't fight him for anything, now that I think about it.

I wish she had.