At nearly 100 years old Harry is looking pretty good. His large oval face could use re-silvering, but there is character and mystery in the uneven spots. They no longer consent to mirror that or who presents themselves to his countenance.

 Standing over 6 feet tall on sturdy legs; four of them, he is impressive. Yes, his oaken veneer has a few chips.  Mostly in places that reflect heavy usage, like his square paunch that holds hats and gloves, lint rollers and balsam pillows.

Harry came from a Victorian home in Westchester County New York.  He was discovered in this incarnation in a vast Brooklyn warehouse, the treasure trove of a Manhattan Auction house specializing in relics from forgotten times and forgotten people. Westchester, circa 1910; wide porches and clicking trains from “the city,” the first “suburbia.”

My partner in life had gone in search of such a thing as Harry as a gift for me. He followed Harry’s movement from catalog, to warehouse, to auction. The event was held in the Upper East Side, Park and 68^th.  This may have been 1992 or 91?  Harry came home sprawled out in the back of a Ford station wagon with wood on the side.  One of his rare horizontal moments.

He was crowned “Harry” immediately. Harry graciously met and received all the comings and goings of our five being household.  His lap received all items that should not be lost or forgotten, conveniently holding them right there, on the path to the door. Harry was quite settled there until 2003.  This marked the beginning of his vagabond years.

After a long trip, route unknown, Harry arrived.  He was unceremoniously plucked off a moving truck and deposited just inside a rustic house, just outside of Albuquerque New Mexico.  Up the stairs, over the cracked boards and through the odd doorway, he landed with dignity intact and commenced adding a bit of Eastern sensibility and stability. The house had been dubbed “a funky hole in the wall” by the driver that drove our absurd quantity of belongings from a 4-bedroom 18-yearlong residence to a hillside cabin with 3 sheds, tucked into the Pinon, up a steep drive, at 5500 ft elevation at the foot of a Sandia mountain. That’s an interesting voyeur aspect of a career in driving long-distance moving trucks.  They see where you came from, and they see where you arrive, and they wonder WHY?

This driver was cranky, out of breath, and a bit alarmed by the hired help he had picked up in the “War Zone” of downtown ABQ. Long Island, New York and Tijeras New Mexico don’t breath the same air. I learned from that move, bring Harry and the essentials, and give the rest away, better yet, don’t acquire it to begin with, words to live by, and to move by.

Harry dried out a bit here.  The big lion-faced hooks, four of them, now held hats of all varieties, NY Yankees baseball caps and sweat cured cowboy hats of the occasional visitors.  Balsam shared the paunch with sage in New Mexico, and Harry took on a more rakish angle.  Not his doing, the floor wasn’t even.

After a while, we moved down the hill.  His mirror face reflected a giant woodstove, a New Mexico mountainside and a couch draped in Pendleton coziness.  It was not unusual for a coyote face to peer in, eyeing the feline snack inside. He had “settled in.”

Next was a Santa Fe rental on the side of a hill. It was all about scarves, so many scarves! In the early morning, a shaft of sun illuminated all sorts of beautiful colors from the multitude of scarves hanging from Harry’s hooks.  Sometime in 2010 or was it 2011? It was time for change again.

This was a quiet time for Harry. He spent a year, or maybe two or three, swathed in royal blue movers’ robes, way back in against the back wall of a storage unit in the south side of Santa Fe.  Hillside homes and injured hips don’t mix well. It was another year or so, waiting and watching while our elders made their way out of body and into memory. The books, the paintings, the baskets and blankets, stood silently in the dark.  Harry was stoic in the back, as the tallest always have to stand in the back. When that door went up finally on a bright Santa Fe day, it was Harry who reflected the cobalt blue sky. He took his place closest to the cab, strapped in for a long ride to somewhere.

Another epic road trip, headed to the East, in the smallest UHAUL truck available.  This time, it was driven by Harry’s people on a heroic journey that was worth doing, just to know that we could. From Albuquerque, across Kansas from Colorado, the small truck bumped and grinded its way. A cooler full of green chilis between the saggy seats and all the belongings that remained from 12 years in New Mexico, we drove to the music of AM radio.  A bittersweet and nostalgic journey.

Arriving in our new spot in northern New York, Harry was tantalizingly close to his beginning. Now his hooks held straw hats for the races at Saratoga, and the warm hats, gloves and balaclava needed for survival in a northern winter. Four years later he was headed south, in search of children and sunshine.

 South is where Harry has been now for some years, with light duty standing like a waiting retiree. Well Harry is back on the truck, robed in his favorite royal blue and ready for another incarnation in Oregon. A guess might find him crossing Kansas today, headed west again as I write. I know he will be visiting snowy Montana this trip, in the company of another family’s chilly Floridian furniture.

I like to think that Harry chose this life, that he revels in the reveal at the end of a long ride. There have been moves done with capable hands, but also precarious moves, where an unwilling piece of furniture might have chosen to break a leg, or crash a mirror which would have ended both his usefulness and his adventures. He would have been left behind.

That hasn’t happened in a century and yet, he controls none of it. Where and when his usefulness, longevity and wanderlust end, I don’t know. He is so much older than I. So, if you were to find a 6-foot hall tree with a mirror and lion faces on his hooks standing waiting, I would buy it.  He may hold the secret to a long full life.

“Accept what comes, relish change, put your best face forward. Do what you can to help, put your hand out and be willing to hold someone’s burden, for a while, and only for a while. If someone drops your lid carelessly, make a loud noise, they will notice and be more gentle next time.”

With love, Harry

This one’s for you Gene, with love