On the Couch

It’s all done and over with. The old couch has been freecycled. The new one delivered, and set up. The family room furniture has been shuffled. The room looks nice and big. I was so caught in the logistics of it all, that I simply did not realize that the couch put on freecycle was the first thing EVER BigGeek and I bought together. More than five years ago. Five and a half to be precise. We had moved into our own apartment in a fancy neighborhood. The apartment was quite bare. BigGeek’s old stuff had been all trashed. I didn’t have much, I was still a student. We had to fill a whole apartment. Where do you start? The Couch. Young and just starting out, we headed out to IKEA. The heaven of cheap furniture. I love IKEA. No, make that WE love IKEA and will continue to do so until we can afford $8000 couches from fancy Scandinavian or Italian furniture stores.

Trying to pick a piece of furniture (or China) together can be an eye opener, compared to say, a date. So, on that first trip to IKEA, we discussed our tastes. We both loved modern, minimalist furniture. Sharp, clean edges, no frou-frou. So that was easy. I liked bold colors, he liked natural. I can buy a scarlet red couch in a heartbeat, he won’t even look at it. We both settled on a leather couch. He preferred the big comfy one. I wanted the nice sleek one. Couches are like shoes. Comfy ones are almost always ugly. He wanted black, I wanted red or orange or something bright. After what turned out to be a bitter battle that was a step away from being acrimonious, I gave in and we bought the sleek leather couch in black. The couch was delivered a few days later and it looked so nice. Sleek and shiny. Very modern. Just like us. It fit just so in our apartment. Such carefree days they were. The couch was the first of our firsts and we knew that.

The couch did not let us down. It weathered coffee spills and TV dinners and sandwich crumbs and crazy parties and cozy get-togethers. It followed us when we bought our first home and became the mainstay of our family room. Many movies were seen sitting on it. Many wonderful discussions had. Many fights and many talks. Many fears aired and many hopes shared. Chip napped on it as a baby, climbed on it as a toddler. He learned to jump from it and learnt to do a flip to explore behind it.

Despite all these memories, I don’t miss the couch. Which is strange for a person like me who is capable of missing everything and anything. I miss time zones when we travel or change clocks during Spring and Fall. I just long for the old time. It wasn’t until the nice freecyclers were carrying out the couch that it dawned on me. Here were three men carrying away our first ever material possession bought together and I really didn’t care. The couch had truly moved on to the freecyclers music room.

When we bought the couch five and half years ago, I never imagined me where I am today. I really don’t know what I thought I was going to be in five and half years. A wife, yes. A mother, yes. But there were no textures. It was all a dreamy, hazy blur. I definitely got more than what I bargained for in some ways, less in other. But such is life. And as we settled down on the couch yesterday, me, BigGeek, my mom and Chip, a thought crossed my mind. Where would I find this couch and where would the couch find me five and a half years from now?