Category Archives: memory

There are roses, small sweetheart-style var­ie­gated ones, stuck one or two at a time in small vases on the cof­fee table. Maybe you’d seen it on a design website—maybe one of Martha Stewart’s mag­a­zines, though you’d be really embar­rassed if that was the case. Espe­cially since the rest of the room is a mish-mash of hand-me-down fur­ni­ture.

First, there are your mother-in-law’s 1950s mod­ern sofas, loveseats, really, impos­si­ble to sleep on, although the TV doesn’t get recep­tion any­way, so there’s no point in try­ing to snooze under the influ­ence of infomer­cials. There’s a Swedish-style fold­ing rock­ing chair—the brick red can­vas sling faded to Nan­tucket pink or what­ever they called that sun­bleached color—in need of a new cover, as the one you’ve got is torn at the cor­ner, from that time you sat down at the wrong angle, and the decades-old fab­ric tore at the cor­ner. Both the rock­ing chair and the blonde wood cof­fee table—the one with the annoy­ing carv­ings and lines that are impos­si­ble to keep grit out of, even with a tooth­brush, and you just aren’t the tooth­brush type of cleaner—come from your sister-in-law, who had them before she had her grown-up life. The mag­a­zine rack was some­thing a friend was going to toss when she moved. The bas­kets with the rest of the mag­a­zines another cast off from your sis­ter in law.

The book­case, the solid one, not the blonde Swedish style fold­ing ones you bought at the big-box kitchen and bath­room store, is actu­ally yours—a present from your father when you were thir­teen. He bought it unfin­ished, and one late sum­mer into early fall, the two of you sanded it on evenings and week­ends, he with the belt sander and you with your paper-wrapped block. Once it was ready for stain­ing, you argued, not seri­ously, over the color—you wanted the light­est pine stain, know­ing even then it would fade to a hon­eyed amber that was as dark of a wood color as you wanted. Cherry was nice, but the wood stain color has bad mem­o­ries for you—it’s the color of the cig­a­rette smoke-infused boards in the box-frame book­cases your mother put together, and which had to be taken down and apart, then put back together, every few years, when you moved to dif­fer­ent apartments—when the rent went up too high at the old one, or the down­stairs neigh­bors brought cock­roaches in dur­ing an uncon­trol­lable infes­ta­tion, or the other down­stairs neigh­bors smoked too much pot and had scream­ing fights that required call­ing the cops. Cherry wood didn’t have good asso­ci­a­tions for you. It speaks of an itin­er­ant life.

Each layer of stain, each coat of var­nish there­after was some­thing you per­son­ally super­vised. You took care, sand­ing the var­nished sur­face again with gar­net paper before the next layer when on, under your father’s super­vi­sion. You didn’t really need it—you were care­ful, even at thir­teen, delib­er­ate, metic­u­lous in your actions. A grown up, even before you were out of your train­ing bra. It came out beau­ti­fully, and the book­case fol­lowed you from bed­room to itin­er­ant bed­room, to col­lege and law school and now your mar­ried home. It’s been a con­stant through your growing-up pere­gri­na­tions, a solid home for your books—some new friends replac­ing old ones, some old ones that have stood the test of time.

There’s a mish-mash of CD tow­ers, more from your hus­band than you. He’s more of a music junkie, though you’ve both found new bands you like together that let you tease each other less about your pre-marriage music selec­tions, from Bruce Spring­steen to Bon Jovi—there are lots of new CDs that give you some­thing to lis­ten to, together. You bought a TV stand, together, to hold the TV that was a hand-me-down from your father, when he bought a new one. It gets lousy recep­tion, but that’s irrel­e­vant, since you both agreed your first year of mar­riage that cable wasn’t worth the expense. You got out of the habit of watch­ing TV, then, and instead, the two of you read on the sofa or web-surfed to your technophile’s heart’s con­tent on the lap­top. The TV stand does hold the VCR/DVD player you also bought, together—and the weird assem­blage of movies that you watch at ran­dom inter­vals. Mostly, the TV’s become an extra place to put CDs, now over­flow­ing from the tow­ers you both brought into the mar­riage. Your music run­neth over, so to say.

There are those fold­ing book­cases, one on top of the other, every shelf bear­ing a mix of books, all acquired since your meet­ing and mar­riage. Some books you each read on your own, some you’ve both read and bonded over. The shelves are overflowing—books stacked on top and in front of the neatly-shelved ones, the angles pre­car­i­ous and threat­en­ing to fall on the var­i­ous knick-knacks that you’ve both acquired over the years.

You’ve got a col­lec­tion of throws on the sofa—one a gift knit­ted by friends, one an almost-heirloom hand-me-down from a great aunt, and the last a fleece cast-off your father had in his car and was going to get rid of. They some­times flop over the side table you took from the friend who was toss­ing the mag­a­zine rack—it was the right size, even if it has a wal­nut fin­ish and doesn’t really go with the rest of the mish-mash, which at least has the ben­e­fit of being in the same color fam­ily. But you’ve made room for it any­way, and it’s useful—it holds more books, more bud vases with dis­count roses, and pro­vides some­place to shove more mag­a­zines under.

It’s a mot­ley assem­blage of fur­ni­ture, and very lit­tle of it is some­thing you per­son­ally picked out. For a long time, you’ve wanted things of your own—that you picked out, hag­gled over with your spouse, bought to replace the things of the past that bear the weight of expe­ri­ence, other people’s and yours. As if the pur­chase of new things is enough to wash over the past, and usher you into a grown-up life where the signs of wear and tear are replaced by shiny new sur­faces. But these old pieces of fur­ni­ture, inher­ited from fam­ily and friends, still house your heart and mind, even if the shelves run over sometimes—your heart and mind in sound and paper, in talk­ing and laugh­ing and read­ing aloud to one another, and in nights and week­ends spent under blan­kets on couches too short for real com­fort, but which you’ve learned to accus­tom your body to. When are any of us, really, totally com­fort­able? We’re not—we learn to adapt to our envi­ron­ments, and make them our own as we can. We add things that reflect who we’ve become as we got older, new pieces of fur­ni­ture that meet new needs, new embell­ish­ments and acces­sories that show the way we’ve tweaked our­selves over time.

Mak­ing do with what you’ve already got, learn­ing to live and be com­fort­able with it, while not being afraid to add fin­ish­ing touches and rearrange the already exist­ing furniture—that’s the real sign of a grown up life.