The Old Couch...

This is the second real piece of furniture/equipment I ever bought. I bought it 9 years ago. I made $16,000 that year trying to see if I should go into education. I love junior highers and high schoolers. I really, really do. But I did not want to be a classroom teacher. Meanwhile I bought a Proform Treadmill (which I still have and use in the winters) and this couch. I wanted a Pottery Barn Basic Couch. I even drove into the Chicago suburbs to the Pottery Barn store. And I filled out the order forms in front of a very kind and helpful store salesperson. But then when I drove back to the town I was living in, I called the store and cancelled the order. It wasn't financially wise. I knew it. So I went to Rockford, IL and I bought this $300 couch. And a half year later I decided not to start Library of Science grad school out in L.A. where I was enrolled, and I moved to Minneapolis to go to Minneapolis Academy of Art and Design. I was working at Barnes & Noble downtown making $7.25 an hour (which was the most I'd ever made in the retail bookstore jobs). So I found an apartment in the Phillips Neighborhood within walking distance of work and school. It was a one-room apartment with a tiny little kitchenette and a closet big enough to unfold my treadmill. My couch was my couch during the day and my bed at night. It was the couch I sat on with Brad for the first time. We weren't dating at the beginning of the evening and halfway through a movie, somehow we were dating. It came with us into Brad's house the week before we were even married. And, of note, it joined the other 4 couches living in the house. Boys and their couches.... I nursed all four of my babies on this couch. I've cried and laughed and talked and wrestled little bodies and cuddled and read countless books and kissed on this couch. And now it is gone. Last weekend, my mother and father-in-law gave us their leather couch and chair. They are mighty fine pieces of furniture -- made well and they look good. I am thankful, so thankful. But I found myself wistful about this simple gray couch so I needed to write a little. Thank you for indulging me.