I sold the car today.
For those of you who may read this and have no idea why that is significant, you didn’t know my husband, Tony. He’s gone now a year and a half. Hard to believe.
I have been sorting and moving on and in and back to myself in the last months.
I have re entered the world of relationships.
I have sent my daughter off to college.
I have repainted the bedroom furniture, had the floors scraped.
And I reupholstered the couches that spent a lot of time in the last twenty years holding various parts of our family. In sickness and in health, in fights big enough to demand a time of separation and long leisurely afternoons in front of the tv, the only piece of furniture wide enough and soft enough to hold the two of us and sometimes the three of us. Allow us to feel each others skin and fabric and the crumbs from an errant cookie.
The couch, actually couches, were made by Uncle Ben, the odd but crafted upholsterer, who stuffed the two twin bed size couches with the finest down that lasted from then until about a month ago when I decided it was time to recover the softest and most comforting piece of furniture we had owned together. Tony and I. Husband and wife. Hope-r and Hope-ee. Mother and Father, Friend and Lover.
The couches came back from the upholsterer today stiff as two boards.A punishment
.I deigned to try to improve Uncle Ben’s handiwork.
Not to worry, I will pay the extra money and get the foam gone and the feathers replaced.
But sometimes, I am learning, wear and tear, memory and complaint, joy and disappointment cannot be covered with new blue fabric and an alternate denim ticking.
But I was talking about the car. Or maybe not.
Another step back to myself. As I was, now am, dipped and coated with my life of twenty or so years.
Those sofas are just too hard to rest on these days.