Theres a stranger in my house

On my way to church each week, I pass a construction site that is to be a brand new business. It has two bays, but it is much too small for a car repair place. It has a loading dock like a grocery store for 18 wheelers or big trucks to back up to but it is too small for a grocery. Its a very tall brick building with what looks like a little office in the front. After the sign goes up, each week I try to memorize the phone number.

I need what they have.

Quality Furniture Restoration.

I have a desk, that my mother had before me, that is need of some love and attention, some skilled love and attention. Really, it plain needs repair and restoration.

Before it was here and there with me, surviving a hurricane in a damaged shed, and then sitting in my garage for the past I don't know how long, it went to college with my mother in the 1960s, then back to her parent's house, and who knows where else in between, as she is not here to tell and the desk isn't telling either.

I finally called them over for an estimate and nearly choked when they gave me the final figure. I could have bought a nicer, brand new desk for less, and I don't even need a desk. But what would happen to this one? And it cant go on in the state its in.

I finally wrote the check and watched the little desk being carried away, only to re-appear months later ( and I do mean months.... it took months) at my door early one morning this week, almost unrecognizable.

Its nestled in my upstairs office now, under the front window, and I cant keep my eyes off of it. I literally walk upstairs to just look at it. I told my husband last night, I feel like there is a stranger in the house.

He said, not all strangers are bad things, you'll become friends.