Nana's Lamp

Whoo-hooo -- it's Friday!

And to make it even better, I got a phone call this morning from the lamp repair place; Nana's lamp is rewired and ready to go.

Nana was my mother's mother. A real character. She was the kind of person who, just being herself, engendered stories. Many, many stories . . . but that's another posting.

Anyway, Nana had a lamp that always sat in her living room. It's a table lamp with a lovely turned mahogany base (alleged to have come out of Galveston Bay as a piece of "driftwood" -- who knew that chunks of mahogany drifted?) and an old-timey, worn, but-still-lovely silk drum lampshade. It stands about 32 inches tall, a rather stately-looking lamp. It actually has sockets for two light bulbs, which you turn on by little chains. Nana obviously thought the chains were rather anemic, so she attached longer link chains to them. Now, they hang there blowing in the breeze, waiting to be pulled. Oh yes, to top if off, the lamp has a big ol', clear marble (like you play games with) finial!

The lamp evokes Nana and the three different residences in which I knew her. I can look at that lamp and feel Nana when I was a child, a teenager and an adult. She gave us all strict instructions to never part with any of her furniture. "This is a nice lamp; don't ever get rid of it!" she would save.

Well, Nana, I have your lamp, it's newly rewired and ready to light up a room.