The past week has been fairly intense. My son started a great new job just in time for his lease to run out at his apartment. So we quickly found him a new apartment closer to his new job, which is great since he has to be there at 4am each day! He is also closer to us and all of the things he knows and grew up around. The apartment is bigger and really cool! But it meant finding it, packing up and moving in a matter of a week. It also meant getting things up to the 3rd floor with no elevator. The top floor means a huge vaulted ceiling, but it also meant 3 flights of stairs with each trip from truck to apartment! We did hire a mover so the big stuff wasn’t our headache, but I hated watching them struggle with the big leather sofa and Jon’s monstrous desk. Considering how quickly we did it all, it went smoothly and his new place is really great!
During this same time frame I had ordered new den furniture. Tim and I had an anniversary coming up (30 years, if you can believe it!) and I wanted to take all of the money I have made judging competitions so far this year and buy him a new comfy chair. When Jon got a bigger place, I knew he loved our old leather sofa so I decided to give it to him. The only reason I ever bought it was to make our den more “manly”. My niece told me years ago that my decorating style was “light and fluffy”!! I saw the man my then teenage son was becoming, a 6’4″ offensive lineman, and I realized light and fluffy was probably not what he wanted to bring his teammates home to. So he went with me and we picked out a tough leather sofa and 2 brown tapestry chairs. I put up football memorabilia and a big TV. Now that was a room for guys!!
As time went on, my husband decided he needed a recliner, so although that was definitely not my style, we went recliner shopping. The first one he decided he liked looked like a huge blob of flesh colored leather. As he talked to the salesperson about that chair, I wanted to cry! I did not want that in my house, manly room or not. It was just…UGLY! I asked him to please keep looking around the store and he did. Finally he settled on one that was somewhat smaller and a more normal beige color. Still not my favorite thing, but at least it did not look like a giant slug had slithered into our den.
Now, about 6 years later, the recliner had outlived it’s usefulness. Tim no longer finds it comfortable and the arm was broken. So the sofa had a new home, Tim had a new project (fixing the recliner so he could donate it to the Community Furniture Bank) and I had a new room to decorate, this time in a style that was a compromise to suit us all. To make sure Tim got the chair he wanted, my gift to him, I decided we would find THE chair and then I would decorate around it. Now Tim wanted a chair that was perfect and that is what I wanted for him. Or so I said, until we began actually shopping for it. Every chair was too big, too small, too hard, too soft, too tall in the back, too low, too long in the leg room, or too short. Even picky Goldilocks could find one chair that was just right!! Then I found a chair I liked. The day of shopping was coming to an end. Tim was sitting in a chair I liked while talking to a friend we had run into at the store. I told the salesperson I would take that chair and a sofa table I had seen in another part of the store. Tim was stunned, I think. I made a snap decision and bought a chair with a rather vibrant pattern that he would now have to pick his chair around instead of the original plan of building the room around whatever chair he picked out!
The next day we began our quest again and near the end of the day Tim found THE chair. And I could get it in a fabric that would work with my new chair. That is kind of how marriage is. Our chairs aren’t alike. They are styled quite differently and one has a wild pattern and the other is a solid color. One is dainty and the other a bit oversized. They came from totally different places. But they work together, they compliment each other, all of the while keeping their own identity by the mere fact that they are so different and satisfied with being different. Together they make an interesting, eclectic room. And we have an interesting, eclectic marriage. So the chair was ordered and we went home happy.
When Jon suddenly got his new job, quickly found his new apartment and we decided to give him our couch, we headed back to the furniture store and sight unseen ( I had seen it a couple of weeks before but they no longer had one in stock. We looked at the picture on line and made a decision.) we ordered a sofa that hopefully would work with both chairs. As time came for Jon’s move, we loaded up our old sofa so that the hired movers could carry it up the three flights of stairs and we would just live with an empty den until the new pieces arrived. Friday morning of the big move I got an email saying Tim’s chair would be delivered the next day and then I got a call from the other store that the sofa had come in and we could get it the next morning. Two different stores in two different parts of town, both of whom held out no hope for getting the pieces in for at least another week or two due to bad weather all over the country this winter, contacted me to tell me everything is here and ready to be in our house.
So we got Jon moved, got our new stuff in our house (with the help of a friend who just happened to show up when we were unloading the sofa) and by this past Monday we were all settled into our new environments. We met up for a dinner out to celebrate new beginnings- a new job, a new apartment, a new den and enduring love, 30 years between Tim and I and then the added bonus 27 years ago of Jon in our lives. It was quite the celebration! When we got home, Tim surprised me with an unusual side table I had seen in one of the stores and we moved it in between our two chairs and it was perfect!
I have always thought I am the luckiest girl around. I don’t know why or how, I struggle with my good fortune sometimes. Why me and not someone else?? Mostly, I just try to enjoy it and be extremely grateful for it. I remember when I was working on my BFA project in college a little over a year ago, I was trying to make it a bit too angst filled and dramatic. My voice teacher, who was helping me pick out music said, ” You need to make this lighter and happier- you have like the best life ever!” And I realized she was right! If my life ended today, I could not ask for more than I had done, seen, felt and enjoyed in my life. I feel fortunate to be able to say that. I still have my questions and doubts, I still have those down times and sad moments, but overall I am moved to tears of joy more often than sorrow.
So in the past week, we have moved furniture- LOTS of furniture, and boxes of clothes, and videos and dishes. I have moved sofas out of one home and into another, I have swapped places with chairs until I found their perfect spot. We have taken old video games to the church youth department and moved an old TV and entertainment center out to give to charity. I have repositioned my desk in my office, and moved a chair from the den to the living room. Very little of my family’s possessions are in the same place they were 2 weeks ago. My son is in a whole new apartment and a whole new move in his career. I have been moved spiritually during this Lenten season (which I will talk about after Lent) and emotionally by the bond between Tim, Jon and I that only seems to get stronger. Yep- I have been moved and I am a lucky girl!
