The Stupidest Thing I Did for Love

But I don’t regret the values that made my decision

“Fire!” yells one of my friends.

I turn to see flames rising from my white tablecloth.

The sixty women I have over for my annual holiday dinner race towards us. We quickly extinguish it. I grab a galvanized tin and deposit the burnt fabric. I walk several yards into the snow away from the house and leave it.

When my husband returns home I tell him I have some bad news. While he is an extremely difficult personality, he is passive-aggressive. On a day-to-day basis, as long as I don’t mess with his world or cost him money, he is seemingly easygoing.

“There was a fire,” I say. “The dining room table was burned.”

“I’m fine with that,” he says. “As long as you’re fine with not getting a new table.”

Okay then, problem solved. As long as he’s not upset I can live with my table being destroyed. It seems the caterer didn’t place the Sterno correctly and that’s what caused the fire. Every other year, I had made the food myself.

Now here’s where the stupidest thing I did for love comes in. And there’s a picture at the bottom of this piece that shows the evidence of it. But first the semantics of it.

Initially, I tried to find someone who could repair the mahogany inlay. It wasn’t possible. It’s difficult to work with inlay and nearly a third of the table had been burned.

One of them says, “You need to call your insurance agency.”

Oh, good point. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I think I got lost somewhere between the upset of a piece of furniture I loved and my husband saying it wasn’t going to be replaced. I submit the claim with pictures.

Enter STUPID love:

“Hi, Mrs. Orme,” says the insurance company representative. “We are mailing you a check and someone will be there to pick up the table this week.”

“What?” I ask. “You’re going to take my table?”

“Yes,” she says. “We do that to ensure the claim is valid.”

“But it was the first purchase we made as newlyweds,” I say. “I’m really sentimental about it. It’s ruined but I want to put it in another room in my basement or something. I’m not sure I can part with it.”

“It’s our policy,” she says.

“Okay,” I say. “I don’t want the check.

“What? Are you certain?” she says with an anguished high pitched tone.

“Yes,” I say. “I don’t want to get rid of our first purchase together.”

“Mrs. Orme,” she says. “I’m gonna ask you one more time. Are you telling me you don’t want us to send you a $10,000 check?”

“Yes,” I say.

But she did ask me one more time, and another after that because who in their right mind passes up a $10,000 check?! Especially since we had bought this very expensive piece for far less because we had traveled to North Carolina to buy it.

And that is the stupidest thing I ever did for love.

I’m sure you’re wondering what my husband thought.

Back to he lived in his world and I lived in mine, he didn’t care about the household stuff. He didn’t care if the table was replaced. Things like that didn’t matter to him. And we were still in a better place in our marriage. As long as it didn’t interrupt his world or cost him anything he didn’t care what choice I made.

He didn’t see the money as a loss to him because it would’ve gone to a new table.

Ultimately, as you can see below, my friend helped me sand the table and chalk paint it. I thought it looked pretty. I was happy when I divorced and a beautiful young family took it to make their own memories.

The girls still talk about the great holiday fire.

And what ended up being very expensive pasta.

I bet the insurance rep talks about the dummy who passed on 10K.

Me? I would never do something that foolish for love again.

But I adhere to the values in my heart that made that choice.