Rearranging the furniture (part 2)

I thought everyone rearranged the furniture frequently until I met Tony, the man who is now my husband. His experience growing up could not have been more different.

When his mom and dad moved into their first (and only) house, they picked out their furniture, moved it into place and there it stayed. They chose a heavy Spanish-style living room set, a low couch in olive green chenille, which faced two squat chairs upholstered in blue stripes.

The first time I visited Tony’s childhood home, I noticed they were in mint condition despite the fact they were more than 30 years old. “That’s because no one was allowed to sit on them,” he told me.

“Not even your mom and dad?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Not even when company came over?” I couldn’t believe it.

“We didn’t have company,” he said.

It wasn’t just the living room. The family room still had orange shag carpet, and you could see the deep impressions the ancient plaid sofa had left from years of pressing down the pile. Tony and his younger brother’s bedrooms were both decked in orange and brown—twin beds, a small wooden desk for doing homework, a dresser each. The only difference was that his brother had a few posters tacked to the wall. Charles Barkley. Shaquille O’Neil. “He got away with more than I did,” Tony explained.

I think it’s this difference in how we grew up—the fact that in his house, nothing ever moved, and in mine, everything was always in motion—that explains how we react to change. Tony is immediately suspicious, on alert for risk, while I am thinking of the possibilities. I am a daydreamer, ready to fantasize about a month’s vacation in Italy or Australia, and Tony rarely plans a long weekend away.

Once, I told him, “Tone, I want to quit my job and write a book!” That didn’t go over well.

I have learned that any change, even something as insignificant as rearranging the furniture (you can always put it back, after all) will take serious convincing on my part. Perhaps this is why for more than three years, my living room was configured in a such a way that it annoyed me every time I set foot in there.

I was four months pregnant when we moved in, and I can only guess that I was tired, or distracted, but I must have left the living room set up in Tony’s hands and taken a nap instead. True to his techno-geek, audiophile nature, he chose to place the stereo where any reasonable person would put the couch. Oh, he had his reasons. Acoustics, room resonance modes, blah, blah. But the result was that the couch had to be pushed to one side of the room or the other, totally off balance and not taking advantage of the fire place as the room’s focal point. You cannot, as you know, sit on the stereo and gaze at the fire.

Three years of sitting in that room wondering “Why the hell is stereo in the middle of the room?” feeling like every time we had friends over, they would sit on the couch at one end of the room, and we’d shout at them all the way from the chairs at other end.

So today, I just couldn’t stand it, and announced that we’d be moving the furniture into a configuration that works for me, either with his help and agreement, or if not—I’d just do it myself one day when he was out. And I must have had a little bit of crazy in my eyes because he didn’t even try to resist.

And now, with the couch across from the fireplace, a comfortable, yet close cluster of chairs to encourage conversation, and the stereo in a more appropriate place, I am satisfied, in fact, gleeful with the change. It is like a weight has been lifted from my soul and I wonder if this is how my mom felt after she’d reordered the living room furniture again.

Light.

Free.

Like the change had suddenly opened possibilities that had never been there before. She could see them now and she could go after her dreams, with the couch pointed in the right direction.