It was in the first year of my “starter marriage” that my husband and I made the substantial purchase of bed, couch, and dining room set. Our prospect of owning “real furniture” was exciting, albeit we lived in a rental apartment. Therefore, when we selected our meager furnishings, we took this task seriously. Who knew how long we would be sitting on this furniture? 5 years? 10 years? Longer?
The couch was long, a full nine feet, with a multitude of pillows, in a straight-back modern style. The fern pattern in chintz fabric was trendy then, done in 1970s colors of blue and brown, and fit perfectly in our tiny apartment. It became my bed many nights over the next year as my husband spent his evenings at the hospital. I drifted off as television channels slowly shut down, one by one until nothing save snow was left on our 12 inch black and white TV. Some nights I listened to the radio and read Stephen King or Michael Creighton, which meant I got no sleep at all. Every sound in the apartment exacerbated my elevated heart rate because there is nothing like reading a horror story before bed. Two years later, older but barely wiser, my “starter marriage” dissolved. I got the household furnishings; he got the car.
The couch crowded out my even tinier apartment, which could not accommodate such a beast, and the blue-brown colors clashed with the lime-green shag carpet. It was a miserable look, but there were no reality shows back in 1981 that could fix this problem. Even in my next house, similar shades of green (trending toward olive) shag rug covered the floors of the turn-of-the-century craftsman, I shoved the couch into a back bedroom. Finally, after being ignored for over four years, the couch was moved to the living room of our new home with my new husband; but, not for long, as within three years we found another place, a larger home to accommodate our growing family, with even worse carpeting in a hideous orange hue. We moved anyway.
For the next five years, the blue-brown couch sat on wall-to-wall ginger-colored carpeting as my husband and I removed “cottage cheese” off the ceiling, wallpaper off the walls, linoleum off the kitchen floors, and eventually the rest of the rug throughout the house. Finally, after years, we enjoyed the couch, but the problem was the couch was too long and fit better in the living room, while our family congregated in the kitchen and family room. On holidays, children and grandparents visited on the couch; on occasional sleepovers, the couch served as futons, and with three-year olds, the cushions became “hideouts,” but eventually our family neglected it for the leather model by the television.
Until recently, that is. Our youngest daughter moved to her college apartment and wanted the sofa, as it matched her tasteful tan carpet. Getting it through the door of the second floor apartment meant Sam and her dad climbed onto the roof and angled it in, but they managed. At the end of that school year, the ingenuity of the college students moved the couch, again, to another place—a five-bedroom house with five fellow music majors. The couch hosted many a concert (all classical music performances) and all the requisite revelry that goes with being in college. Now, in Sam’s third college home, the couch resides in the center of her living room, surrounded by pizza boxes and wine and sheet music and musical instruments. I visited recently, sat on the couch and sank to the floor—the cushions barely respond, the springs are shot, the fabric is thread bare, and stuffing is showing, but the college kids do not mind.
They also do not know this story, so this is for them. Just as I read recently that furniture can be recycled, wood chips reclaimed from wood furnishings, cotton, stuffing, and other fabrics reused, little is tossed in the landfill. My heart smiled at the thought that this old couch and its elements can be recovered or restored like memories.
Love is Complicated 