The Sofa

Yesterday we cashed in on a Craig's List find, and brought a new sofa home from Santa Fe.  Lightly used, and an elegant cognac leather, it is a fitting replacement to the green leather monster that we have been living with since the mid-90s in Milwaukee.  Worn and somewhat stained, our old sofa maintained however that classic Taos shabby chic, as Deborah likes to phrase it.  But it was tired.  It was time.

I remember when it was new, bought (on sale of course) at the Boston Store, as a replacement for the first ever sofa we had bought together when we were living in Chicago.  What is now a soft mellow green color was at the time evergreen, with tan trim that bordered on gold.  When the movers were carrying it into the house, up to the second floor TV room, they were all like, hey, Paaackers colors, cooool.  Almost enough to convince me to send it back, but I ignored the cheesehead adoration and moved on.

How many nights on that sofa, the year that Deborah did the summer abroad in Italy, pouring bronze and throwing clay while I did the corporate thing back home in Wisconsin?  Of course I had the cat, Diva, to keep me company, and a few years later Deborah and I would be sitting on that same sofa when Diva had a stroke and started literally chasing her own tail.  She had to be put down, and we came home and cried on the sofa, but the sofa probably doesn't remember that.

Then there were the evenings and weekends spent reading while Deborah was at university finishing her MFA.  Likewise for her all the nights when my corporate gig had me on the road a hundred thousand miles a year or more.  Maybe that was when the newness began to fade a little, the green began to mellow, the first stains and a cat scratch or two arrived, especially after Diva was followed by two new cats, Io and Vega, rescued from a Brookfield, Wisconsin shelter.

Both the cats and the sofa made the trip across the pond to Belgium with us, the cats learning to speak both French (le mieu) and Flemish (het meouw).  And the sofa comforted me as my dad was back in the US dying of cancer, and wrapped me in its cushions when he was gone and my sleep seemed to have left with him.  And then of course the sofa was where we sat and watched the horror that was 9/11, four thousand miles from home, and our embassy surrounded by razor wire and tanks, and all the comings and goings at the Belgian Foreign Ministry down the block from our apartment.  The world changed then, but it would be a while before we all knew how much.

And when I quit the corporate gig and we moved to Taos, the sofa came with us, anchored us in our new space, welcomed the familiar cats, and then our first dog, Banshee, who was too scared for two years to get on the sofa with us, and two years later her playmate, Neruda, who took the sofa over like he owned the place.  And the sofa was where we watched the progression of the 2008 campaign, and where we sat with fifteen of our friends (okay not all of us were on the damned sofa but you get the idea) when the election was called for Obama and all fifteen of us wept and cheered and swayed in front of the TV.

That's a lot of life for a sofa.  Any sofa.  Like a good friend, I will be sad to see it go.  But another friend is going to take it, so we know it will have a good home, and may even get to visit with it from time to time and reminisce.

Because it was time.  But, oh, what a time it was.