My Red Bench Memory

The red table needed to come home with me.

I knew it as sure I’d know anything. There it sat, all alone, at the end of garage sale items.

Yellow overstuffed chairs wrapped in plastic, languished nearby, the creation of an American woman who moved to Mexico a dozen years ago and started a manufacturing business. Now she was closing her business and having a garage sale to move leftover items, fabric, and clothing along to someone else.

I needed a piano bench. I wanted a coffee table. I could use an end table.

I had just moved to central Mexico but I was unsure how long I’d be staying. I had an entire casita to furnish and I needed to do it inexpensively and tastefully.

Not a “I’m not Dead Yet” sale but close to it, this sale was. The seller, her staff inside taking pesos as items sold, stood in the one of the few wide streets in the colonial Mexican town, chatting with other older white expats. One look at her and I knew I had little in common with her. All I wanted to do was to give her the requested 200 pesos, take the treasured item and go on my way.

Bright, even brilliant, shiny red it was, matching nothing else the seller offered. Fire engines next to it would appear dull. Heavy lacquer covered the sturdy structure, little more than eighteen inches high and wide. Despite a few…