The Smell of a Drawer

I remember sitting at Treetops when I was very young, at my dad’s big wooden desk in front of a large bay window. The window opened up to a perfectly serene yard, with a deck, mulched flower beds, birch trees and a curving stone wall. A perfect advertisement for prospective clients. I would stare out that window for hours, my dad working at his drafting table behind me, America’s “A Horse with No Name” serenading us on his dusty tape player. My legs dangled from the chair, kicking back and forth, back and forth to the rhythm of the song.

I loved looking in the top drawer of that desk, with nests of rubber bands that he’d use to secure rolled up blue prints, a stapler, scotch tape, masking tape, measuring tape, dust, pencils, pens and post-it notes. I loved this drawer. It said something. Each of these things had a specific purpose and my dad used them to do grand things like make something ugly into something beautiful. I peeked inside the three side drawers filled with file folders and envelopes and boring things. I always knew the boring stuff would be there, and wondered how long dad had done that boring stuff. Looking at pieces of paper and scowling, drinking from the same coffee cup that had a picture of Paul, Colleen and I smiling out of a tent during a road trip to Maine. I knew that he drew a lot and erased a lot, and that this was the fun part of his job, but I could never quite understand the desk part, the part he would yell about, or get frustrated about and stay late and not come home for dinner because of.

As I go through the drawers and shelves of my desk at Scholastic, pulling out old business cards and coffee mugs and plastic spoons and balls of rubber bands, I am taken back to dad’s desk. The supplies and the drawers themselves smell eerily the same as his did 20 years ago. Somehow, I’m overtaken with a present nostalgia. All of a sudden, I am him and he is me: cogs in a machine of people working at desks with pens and envelope openers and clocks that tell us when to come and go. He raised me well, into a hard working girl who wants to get the most out of life and succeed in a career. But he also raised me to be a free thinker, to be creative and to constantly think outside the box. And so I am. And so I am packing these things into a box and walking out the Big Red door on Friday.

This will probably be the first of a series of posts about this little desk in the Rights Department on the 9th floor in 557 Broadway. There are too many things to say all at once. I’m assuming my perspective will change. My attitude toward the colorful carpets lined with literature, the proverbial Big Red Paw lifting slowly off of my shoulder, the New York City sunlight illuminating the dust bits on my computer screen…