Our homes are furnished with an assortment of comfortable and stylish furniture, but I found that so many memories I have are associated with that classic piece of collective seating - benches. Whether they are quality indoor benches, classic park benches, or any of the variety of sports benches, you probably have a few similar memories of your own. Here's some of mine:
• Passing by collection of benches outside the principal's office, holding a collection of students defiant, repentant, and dazed about their indiscretions.
• Watching tiny indoor benches, holding preschoolers alone and in clusters, waiting in endless time outs.
• Watching benches within the dugout, being emptied by a row on the field or in celebration of a game-winning hit.
• Sitting in a steep assembly of benches - bleachers - that house the collective cheers and groans of high school basketball fans.
• Seeing the entire population of people I knew filing in to the indoor benches of the church I grew up in, on the day I got married.
• Lifting the cover of the bench inside the back door on the evening of the first snow, and pulling out the mittens that were tucked away since late last winter.
• Watching four teenage girls squeeze onto the bench at the rear of the kitchen table on a Friday evening, pulling open pizza boxes and giggling about the school week that was finally over.
• Selecting the dining table with matching benches, in anticipation of the crowded Thanksgiving dinner, where there's always room for another visitor.
• Finding the perfect upholstered bench in Ulhasnagar furniture market and placing it at the foot of the bed, and kicking off bedroom slippers in the same place, day after day, year after year.
• Feeling tremendous satisfaction of installing a pair of indoor benches inside the back door, and hoping that now you have a place for everything and everything in its place.
• Grabbing a fuzzy throw blanket from the benches that double as ottomans in the family room, and settling in for a night of popcorn and movies.
• Finding an antique maple bench in a used furniture store, and using it to fill that empty space in the foyer in a first home, and still using that little bench twenty years later as a luggage rack in my guest room.
• Turning my picnic table and benches into a temporary kitchen table and having my first dinner of take-out Chinese in your new house.
• Brining home some benches with storage baskets into my playroom, and being thrilled when clean-up time becomes quick and easy.
• Adding a hinge-top storage bench in our kitchen, and finally having a great place to toss all the take-out menus.
• Buying a few yards of gorgeous upholstery fabric, and learning to recover a hand-me-down bench into an original treasure that the rest of the family envies.
• Getting an bench storage chest as a birthday gift, and filling it with things I needed for the first home of my own.
• Sitting on a bench on the beach boardwalk, meeting an old friend for an afternoon walk.
• Bringing home bright plastic toy boxes that double as a kiddie indoor benches, and watching my little ones being excited about putting away toys.
• Filling my hallway with a pair of indoor benches that create spaces for a peaceful pause at the end of a busy day.
