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Coffee Table

I have lived in my apartment for over three years when the stay was supposed to be no longer than six months when I first moved here. I abandoned my wanderlust and gave in to the forces of rooting and mostly for J.

Though we've been here quite long, there is little external evidence of it. The rooms are very sparsely furnished and we don't have a television. When I first moved, the idea had been to be functional and it has remained just that way. We have always looked like we could be ready to decamp in very short order.

Recently, thanks to the good graces of an acquaintance who happened by a discarded coffee table and immediately thought of me, I came into a piece of furniture for my living room. That afternoon when J returned from school and saw the newly installed table in front of our couch, she let out a huge squeal of delight. "Mommy, now I can put my foot up on the coffee table when I am sitting on the couch" she said gleefully.

The life changing qualities of the table became evident to her in within the next few minutes as she continued to list them at brisk pace - a place to keep Mommy's laptop, being able to eat dinner sitting on the couch, being able to keep the books we were reading on it and so on. She was quite amazed at the huge difference a humble table had made to our lives.

While I may have been amiss in providing J a high quality life (materially speaking), I am very glad to see her being able to find joy in life's minutiae. To me that smile on her face, and the sparkle in her eyes is not something money can buy with a trip to Disneyworld.

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