Great Aunt Marj has been dead for nearly forty years. I never knew her all that well. She was married to Bill and they lived all their life together in a small flat in Enmore. That was before it was trendy to live in Sydney’s inner west. Amongst her possessions was a stained, musty but very solid sideboard.  

Kids today don’t even know what a sideboard is, but when I was starting out in a share house, it seemed like a great windfall to acquire some free furniture. A truck brought this elegant piece to my small semi in Tamworth. A brass key unlocked two doors and the shelves within were soon filled with an assortment of odd crockery, vases, and glasses. Its solid top was stained. Opening either of the drawers released a fragrant timber smell.  

I moved many times in the following years and the sideboard would always come too, from the bush, to flats in the city at North Ryde, to suburban houses on the Central Coast, to its current home near Terrigal Beach.  

The sideboard has witnessed many dinner parties, birthday parties and Christmas celebrations. It is adorned with a range of photos which tell our family story: the kids as babies, school students, graduates, joyfully wedded, and now, their kids, too. It still houses the Royal Doulton dinner set I was given for my 21st. 

I wonder what it could tell us about Great Aunt Marj? Why did she and Bill never have children? Who came to the mysterious card nights on Tuesdays to which no family members were ever invited? Whose drink caused the stain which I have never been able to remove? After many years on her own after Bill had died, how did it feel to collapse after a stroke and not be found for over twenty-four hours? 

Once I’m gone, will the sideboard sit on the side of the road heading for landfill? Or will someone see its potential and take on a piece of Aunt Marj and me, and make it their own?