My Writing Desk

In 2007, I inherited my grandmother’s writing desk. Not the big rolltop one that stood in the corner of her living room on a leafy Halifax street — years before, that heirloom had been deemed too valuable for a young girl and was instead earmarked for my eldest uncle. No matter. This new desk of mine had always struck me as immeasurably more wonderful anyway.

A rosewood box crafted sometime in the nineteenth century, it opens on a hinge to reveal a writing surface covered with faded purple velvet. The original ink pots are nestled on either side of a pen tray, which tips upward to reveal a hidden compartment. The angled lids conceal squirrelled-away odds and ends: a pencil stub, two tiny dice, a miniature calendar from 1910. The only sign of the original owner — my grandmother’s great-grandmother — is a small brass plaque that reads “Mrs. P. Crichton.” According to my grandmother, the Crichtons had at one point sailed from Nova Scotia to Australia, bringing with...