Full Confession: I’m in love with my sofa
From my futon, I looked around my cosy flat in Toronto’s tony Casa Loma area. The dark floors and trim and stained glass window were complemented by a fireplace painted mauve and faced with a broken china mosaic. It was the 1990s — I’d ragged, sponged, and stencilled my way around the apartment. At 28, I felt too old to watch TV from a futon, even one with a bespoke purple paisley cover. Time to upgrade.
At few days later, I left City Hall at 5:00 and wandered over to Eaton’s - the most grown-up place I knew. With no pets, partner, or children waiting at home, and, that night anyway, no social plans, I meandered first through ladies clothing where I checked new Jones suits, then to shoes, where the latest Clarks caught my eye, and found myself in furniture.
“Take me home,” a magnificent reverse camelback sofa called out, its cry as soft and compelling as its textured burgundy fabric. I sat gingerly at one end and its cushions enveloped me. Oooooh, comfy.
I tentatively turned the label over. Shit, should I spend this?
“Excuse me,” I called to the salesman. “If I bought this tonight, how quickly could it be delivered?”
He approached me slowly. His look said “Shouldn’t you be in IKEA?” Eaton’s furniture department was more of a weekend-with-the-partner purchase, I gathered.
Twenty minutes later, I boarded the subway for St. Clair West, beaming. Yes! It will be mine in eight weeks. 10% down and a payment plan in my pocket.
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Fifteen years passed, the still-loved sofa looking a little worn, when I happened upon Jane Hall’s upholstery store in the Beaches. Hall never saw five patterns incorporating seven colours that she couldn’t put together. That night I emailed her a photo of the sofa with the subject line: “What can you do with this?” I made sure the snap showed the lavender walls of the condo I’d upgraded to and the Siamese twin cats with their need to knead.
She replied with a photo of a throw pillow she said would inspire her. In an uncharacteristic moment I replied: “Go for it - I trust you.” Two weeks later, she sent her technician to pick up my sofa.
The sofa pick up followed another significant event - earlier that morning, my fridge was repaired by Jack, the man who would become my partner. When the reupholstered sofa was delivered, Jack was at my place - our second date. “Oh my god, Jack, isn’t it amazing?” I squealed. It arrived a stunner — six colours, tight weave velvet aside a heavier fabric, stripes, solids, and patterns abutting, with one arm pink and the other green. And the throw cushions- absolutely marvellous.
Jack, more conservative by nature and necessity, was careful. “If you like it…” he trailed off. He didn’t admit to liking the sofa himself, but he also never criticized it, the first of many signs he was for me.
Two years later, we moved in together, buying a house with a red living room. Not even Jane Hall herself would surround a pink, green, and purple sofa with red walls and admittedly I was uncertain. We were too excited to settle in to re-paint though so the red stayed. At first the sofa room was not a room we used a lot. We both preferred to be outside when we could be and in the winter, we were often in the finished basement.
The sofa, however, became a central part of our lives when Jack became ill with cancer. As he became weaker during treatment and later when he suffered with side effects of the disease itself, he would spend large parts of the day and sometimes overnight on the sofa. We would often be together on it, him lying down and me sitting at the end with his legs across me. Jack was assessed for medically assisted death; we met with the funeral director; we hosted relatives who would perform at the celebration of his life; he played with his granddaughters; and he held court during his daughter’s wedding reception - all with him horizontal on the sofa.
A month before Jack died, he moved to the basement where we had a hospital bed set up and where he had access to his bathroom, his computer, and his smoking room. The sofa was no longer the centre of our lives.
As a re-singled woman, the sofa has again become my cosy corner. During COVID, I have made it my Zoom site - not for work calls but for social zooming. Much of what I’ve written has been done from the sofa. Countless phone calls taken there. And books and magazines consumed there voraciously.
It’s been my solo sofa for 18 months now; I long for a time when someone other than me will sit on it again!
