Author: wvfurandroot
Lines of Demarcation
Today is one of those days that marks the anniversary of a day when everything changed. A day when the before was starkly different than the one after; the difference noted at the time. Awareness of the import provoked both laughter and fear. Boundaries shifted, the future took a different shape, everything changed and I knew it was happening. He did too.
We could call it a watershed moment. The atmosphere was pregnant with the import of it all, but we dressed it in frivolity and Thai food and satiety of the senses. There were mangos and daffodils and soft whispers, loud guffaws and shy smiles. An old Jamaican woman commented on our radiance.
My heart hurts to recall it, but my mind cannot shut it out.
The future envisioned during that great change is not what happened. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.” But we were weren’t really making plans as much as we were bearing witness to what was happening, knowing all the while that what was happening was changing the future as much as it was changing us.
I don’t regret it in any sense, but that line that drew itself that day on this day bears stark witness to what was and what could have been both with what had been and what was being born.
There is only one photo of that day. I’m not sharing it because this is about the visceral, not the visual.
I miss him, but it’s also been long enough now that it feels normal he’s not here. He should be here and we should be having that future, but we’re not. I’m having a different one demarked by another day where I knew then and now were miles apart but separated by minutes. That day, too, I knew at the time heralded a before and after. I’ve lived them both now, the before having been longer than the after – so far.
The pictures are in my head, a swirling, twirling dervish of love and memory. This is not what we thought, but what is. Leonard Cohen might say, or sing, at this moment, Dance me to the end of love.
I’m Hungry — A favorite Tom Robbins quote
“Lunch,” he said. His tone was even, rational, devoid of any knuckle of bellicosity. “That’s what we call it in my country. L-U-N-C-H. Lunch. I’m fond of lunch. I am, in fact, a lunch aficionado. Give me liberty or give me lunch. Breakfast comes around too early in the day, and dinner can interfere with one’s plans for the evening, but lunch is right on the money, the only thing it interrupts is work.”
His voice rose slightly. “I require lunch on a daily basis. I’m insured against non-lunch by Blue Cross, Blue Shield and Blue Cheese. Finicky? Not this luncher. I eat the fat, I eat the lean and I lick the platter clean. … In the dietary arena, pals, I have nothing to hide, and would at this juncture gladly masticate and ingest Spam-on-a-stick if you served some up. All I’m asking is that you serve something up, and speedily. I become grumpy when denied my noontide repast…”
—Tom Robbins
The Zen of a Good Sofa
The old sofa with a cushion so threadbare I took to covering it with an afghan my great-grandmother made.
Buddhism, and other traditions, teaches us that contentment lies in losing our attachment to things and situations that are transitory. I think that’s good advice even if I’m attached to all sorts of things.
Home is my happy place. I’m way too attached to the structure and many of its contents. I’ve given up trying to explain it to my satisfaction much less yours. There are all sorts of reasons why being here makes me happy is true even if objectively my love for this heap is probably misguided.
How transitory is something, my sofa for example, that’s been with me for nearly 30 years? The very fabric of it is soaked in the years of my life as a wife and a mother. The sofa witnessed my newlywed years and my divorced years. It held my son and kittens and puppies. It is the perfect sofa for reading the Sunday paper with its curved back and high arms. Stretched out upon it, I daydreamed and plotted, read and wrote, loved and lived. It witnessed the barn’s transformation and was moved from room to room as room function changed with each step forward in the barn conversion.
He didn’t see it until it arrived and soon fell it love with it too.
It’s a sturdy thing. It was bought during the Great Sofa Search of 1984. I scoured Wisconsin for a sofa to place in the house I was beginning a new life as wife and mother. Nothing was right. I searched and searched. I visited Huntington, WV a few weeks before Thanksgiving to visit my parents and found the sofa in a furniture store. I went back to Milwaukee and tried to find it there. I did, but as it turned out, it was less expensive to buy it from the Huntington store and have it shipped to Wisconsin.
It was pricey. The Husband was shocked. I was adamant. I’d done enough shopping by then to know that perfect sofas are hard to come by.
It was background for all sorts of photos it didn’t star in.
It was made by Key City Furniture in North Carolina. I believe they’re still in business. All of their furniture is made to order and each piece is infused with quality workmanship. There’s a reason my couch is 29 years old and just as comfortable as the day a confoozled truck driver delivered it to my Wisconsin home. Usually the truck drivers delivered to stores who then delivered it to the buyer. The guy was shocked to find nobody but my husband and I available to help him off-load it. He wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with taking it off the truck, but upon learning I was pregnant, he and The Ex wrestled it into the house. It’s a behemoth of a sofa.
It’s a beauty – all over-stuffed curves and delicious serpentine lines.
That first day I took photos of it to record it’s arrival in my life never imagining that nearly three decades later I’d again be taking photos of it in a new reincarnation.
The new fabric.
The years beat the fabric up. Mind you, it didn’t look 29 years old, but it was frayed and looking a bit sad. About ten years ago I began pondering the idea of reupholstering it. For those of you who have never delved into the world of upholstery, this is not something you do to save money. You do it when a piece of furniture is perfect save for its fabric. I quickly learned I could buy a new sofa for what this adventure would cost.
I didn’t want a new sofa.
If I could have gotten the same fabric, I would have, but I couldn’t. It was a beautiful brown tapestry that made me smile until the upholsterers carried it out of the house a month ago.
I looked and looked at upholstery grade fabric. I began to despair.
The latest incarnation of the Beloved Sofa.
My mother found the new fabric at a craft supply store. It’s beautiful. As my best friend said, “It’s rich without being formal.” The name of the fabric is patchwork elegance. It’s velvety chenille of black and gold and silver and caramel and cream, diamonds and squares and scrolls and starbursts and medallions with a fleur de lis or two here and there. It’s just stunning. The chenille makes it cuddly, the design makes a statement and all of it makes me happy. It suits the room.
The upholsterer finished it within ten days. The weather and my ice encrusted road kept it hostage. Every time I called to schedule another delivery which would be cancelled due to more snow, a staff person would tell me how well it turned out, how beautiful it was, how people wanted to buy it.
With this winter that won’t end, I began to fear I’d never get it to the barn. A window of opportunity opened as did my car windows when the temperature soared to 60 and the snow began melting. I called and scheduled delivery for today at 2 pm. They were late and I began to fret, but by 2:30 it was sitting in my living room.
It still feels like an old friend with new duds.
Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s nice having my old companion back. Tonight I’ll put some soaring opera fraught with love and longing on the stereo, sip a glass of wine or two, and ponder all that we’ve seen together in this world of attachment and longing and the desire for contentment and happiness. Sitting on my beloved sofa, I will finger the Tibetan prayer beads and consider the Zen of a Good Sofa.
[I’m disappointed that my 4 month old draperies are very much the wrong color. The search for the proper window coverings begin anew.]
W. Va. Fur and Root 