Peggy and I got married in the summer of 2001. We returned to New York City from our honeymoon in Spain on Friday, September 7. The following Tuesday was …. well, you can figure it out.
Freshly married, eager to move forward with our plans and newly reminded of the fragility of human life, we promptly started looking to move out of my studio apartment. However cool and spacious it was, it just wasn’t an apartment necessarily conducive to having any babies, which was our priority, at the time.
In relatively short order, after looking at scores of uninspiring spaces, we somehow struck oil. Peggy happened to spot a promising listing in the very same neighborhood. By the tail end of 2002, we moved from a studio on East 12th to a “Junior Four” (read: a one-bedroom apartment with a dining room/study that could be re-purposed as a second bedroom) on East 9th. This was where we were going to start our family. As it’s turned out, we’ve been there ever since.
Once settled, we decided to get a sectional sofa. In retrospect, I cannot remember why. I think I was romanced by the one my cousins used to have at their old house up in the Berkshires. It just seemed comfier and homey. So, we went to shitty Crate & Barrell on Broadway and picked one up.
Details elude me as to why we chose a brown one, but that’s the color we got. I suppose it meshed with the other colors in the living room, but I’ll be damned if we were that thorough about it. The important thing was that it could accommodate several people quite comfortably. If necessity called for it, two people could sleep on it simultaneously.
In time, our plans to have children were realized, and our big brown couch was soon being climbed all over by Charlotte and, shortly afterwards, her little brother Oliver.
Guests came and went. Myriad meals were consumed on the couch. Parties were thrown on it. Countless drinks were spilled on it. A fortune in coins slid between its cracks. A graveyard of lost LEGO bricks vanished beneath its skirts. Various remotes went frequently astray beneath its cushions. But it served us well.
In time, its robust brown luster faded. In due course, the springs beneath the two most frequently sat-upon spots gave way. The “command center”/”driver’s seat” spot on the far end was soon re-dubbed “the Pit,” as whomever sat in it would sink, butt-first, towards the floor beneath.
When we could no longer tolerate it, Peggy started suggesting we bite the bullet and spring for a new couch. Because I ultimately loathe change, I was slow to get onboard, but even I was getting fed up.
The particulars of getting a new sectional sofa were far more complicated than we’d imagined, but living in a building without a service elevator meant that we had to choose a sectional of very specific measurements. I don’t remember that quandary when we bought the first one, but maybe we’d just gotten lucky.
It took us forever to find a suitable one. I honestly recused myself, after a while, about feeling the need to weigh in on its preferred design. As long as it fit and was comfortable, that would be fine by me. Colors really don’t matter to me.
We settled on one, paid for it and made arrangements for delivery. That will happen tomorrow. Today, our building’s super and handyman removed the old brown one.
On Oliver’s way home from school, he passed by the couch on the sidewalk and snapped the following shot, and I’m not gonna lie. I got kind of a lump in my throat about it.
Yes, it was an ugly, beat-up and suitably pooh-colored piece of shit, but this couch was really the epicenter of our home. There are videos of my kids as tiny tots crawling all over it. To see it dumped on the pavement really breaks my heart.
I was reminded of this song by the Lemonheads about feeling anguish over seemingly banal, inanimate objects.
The new couch arrives tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes. But I’ll always love the old couch.
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