Couch Potato

I was spending the weekend at the cabin, enjoying all the changing colors, when I felt that late afternoon sleepiness descending and my eyelids beginning to get heavy. The warm fire in the stove made it all the harder to resist the tug of a nap. I grabbed a blanket and snuggled down on the couch. It was the maroon and forest green couch that had followed our family from the house on Hidden Valley, into the living room of the Corner Ridge house, up into the loft of the New Hope house and now is tucked into the television corner in the cabin. As I grabbed one of the smaller pillows and sunk down into the cushions, pulling the blanket over my head, I was transported back to the many other times I had laid down on this couch. How many pregnancies had I spent pushing the cushions around me just so, in order to try and get a couple hours sleep? What of all the long weeks spent there while I recovered from hepatitis? How many babies had I nursed sitting on this couch? How many children had I read stories to here? How many books had I become lost in over the years as I sat on cuddled under a quilt? Somehow, those cushions seemed to hold the memories and they flooded over me as I drifted off to sleep.

With fifty years now behind me, we often tend to divide our lives into decades. Me, I divide it into couches. In the far reaches of my mind and in a few baby books, I know we once had a brown striped couch. It must hold memories for my mom. Then I remember the bright blue couch. In the “modern” design of the sixties, it brought the era of Camelot into our home. Today, it would be right in style in a “retro” room. Moving to Arizona, my mom went Mediterranean. Whatever, that means. It is how she referred to our living area; it was Mediterranean. This was the couch of my growing up, this is where I had my “sick days’ home from school, this is where I cuddled my dog, this is where I read all the Laura Inglalls Wilder stories, this is where I have memories of my parents. Sitting. Together. I left home before another couch came into the family. I left home for my own home and the Indian striped couch of our early-married days, a couch that with all the cushions removed and a blanket thrown over the top became a fort for many snowy, afternoons with a houseful of toddlers.

Sometimes, when I think that, “just closing my eyes for a few minutes and taking a power nap” will restore my soul, I plop down on the couch. With my eyes closed and the lulling voices of the television in the background, I am often transported, if only for a few minutes, back to my childhood, back to a time when I was not in charge. For a few minutes, I slip backward in time to a place where my Dad took care of all the bills and my Mom cooked the meals. Sometimes, it takes me clear back to Nana’s house and dozing on the pink divan while she watched “General Hospital” and a pot of gumbo simmered on the stove. I doze for a few minutes and with my eyes closed the world is a simple place and a blanket and pillow once again make everything bearable. No wonder Sigmund Freud and psychotherapy is often equated with a couch; a couch is a magic time machine to your inner childhood.

(Cheryl is my lovely model, dressed in her Mediterranian outfit and sitting as to make her thighs look thin--see KSL "How to sit in a picture")