I Took the Road More Traveled :: Personal Narrative Essay Example

I Took the Road More Traveled The great oak mesa stood in the middle of the room, warped by heat from an old timber stove in the corner. Its dark brown finish had boiled up in the center into little pockets of wax and cure, and that was its grand history--a hundred days or more of Christmas dinners and knives hammered thoughtlessly into the wood. The leaves and edges drooped down, worn under the cant over of rough, uncultured elbows and wood bundles for the stove. Underneath, the modest planks gave way to the graceful arch of the leg, terminating in the vicious paw of a huge dog, polished claws gleaming on the drab chronicle. At night the legs tapped their way upstairs, past the rooms of quiescence adults, stopping at the unfamiliar bed in which I slept. The synodic month illuminated every glistening nail slathered in dew and blood with tempestuous intensity. That evil table, with hairy paws like a dog, a lion, a monster, came to dun with the shifting patterns of blue, playi ng on my coverlet and left again before the silvery, ticklish cicadas pealed their morning mass. And I was afraid. At the table, my chin barely reached my metric grain gutter and my legs dangled wildly above the floor. I eyed the strange woman who stood at the kitchen counter and gazed out at the morning. Miz Edna, I said, Whered ya get this table? hygienic now child, I dont rightly recall. It came from my nan, I reckon. I couldnt imagine Ednas grandmother. My grandmother was already very old and very wrinkled. She stooped when she walked, and shuffled along the floor with a cane. Edna looked like that, and she said her heart hurt when she looked at pictures of her children. That was an grief which plagued old people sometimes I had heard they died of it in a shocking and abrupt manner. Ednas grandmother must have been very old, flush older than mine. How old is your grandma, Miz Edna? Shes dead now, child. She died afore I was born. You stimulate up with your cereal and ru n outside and play. Yes maam. One thing I cant figure though, I said. Whats that? How did you get this table if your grandmother was dead afore you were born? I tol you, child, hurry up. Your ma and Ire going down to the store, and Ive got to get these here dishes scrubbed.