Sofa or Science?

This is my sofa. I bought it pre-husband at Roitman’s Furniture on Providence’s East Side almost twenty years ago. At the time, I liked its red and green plaid upholstery but, more importantly, it was sleek enough to fit down the cramped stairwell that led to my 3-room basement apartment. Roitman’s Furniture is long gone, but my sofa lives on. Now, though, in addition to its faded glory and torn upholstery, the wood underneath has given way, so if I sit on it too long, my back aches, and I need a helping hand to stand. As my sofa nears the end of its life, I think of how it is representative of what our homeschool is about.

In the early days of my sofa’s demise, my husband made certain the good side of each cushion showed when we were expecting company. (The good side meant the side with fewer holes.) Now, we don’t have good sides – just holes – and the smells escaping from this couch I’m pretty certain are beyond the help of Fabreze. Nevertheless, when company is due to arrive, my husband takes a large, gray beach towel and tucks it around the cushions to hide the more unsightly, larger holes. The towel, I estimate, remains in place for ten minutes.

Inevitably, about a month before we host a family holiday, we start thinking about replacing this well-worn piece of furniture, but then the task of actually shopping for a replacement is put on the back burner because there is a menu to plan, food to buy and a house to clean – not to mention math, history, science, etc. - and we do, after all, have the beach towel. Once the holiday is over, the urge to replace the couch subsides considerably along with those thoughts of “What will people think?”

The last time we thought about buying a new sofa, I spent 2 hours online researching upholstery which would survive cat claws. After all that research, I was too exhausted to shop and as one online commenter put it, “You can have a cat or you can have nice furniture. You cannot have both.” I agreed so I moved on to other things.

As our couch became more and more tattered over the years, we considered entering it into the “Worldwide Ugly Couch Contest” or in similar contests sponsored by various local furniture companies. In some of these contests, however, ugly does not necessarily mean a couch with fabric full of holes; it means - to put it plainly - butt-ugly. Our couch does not qualify, but you may feel differently.

As an aside, when my husband and I were married, he had a couch that would have competed nicely in such a contest, but, sadly, we gave it away before we realized such contests existed. (Note: my husband likes to tell everyone that when we merged my apartment with his house, it was only his stuff that went elsewhere, but this is simply not true.)

Recently, my parents, in the process of downsizing from a house to a condo, offered us their old sofa which, of course, looked brand new to us. We immediately accepted. This couch, however, did not replace our old sofa. Instead, we put my parent’s couch in a room which has been void of furniture since we moved into our home four years ago. So, our old sofa is still with us, and it gets as much use now as did it before we got our “new” couch, mainly because it is in the same room as the X-box, the hi-def TV and the computer, and also, because we’re allowed to eat and drink anything while sitting on it without the woman of the house – that would be me - freaking out.

Every parent knows what it is that makes them a homeschooler. Perhaps you know you are a homeschooler because you look forward to reading those 20 books that your kids just put in the library book bag, or because you enjoy coaching your daughter’s soccer team or because you are excited at the thought of preparing a lesson for the 15 children that form your child’s homeschool co-op, boy scout troop or Sunday school class. You know, too, what is placed on the back burner while you read, coach or teach. I believe my sofa is symbolic of the fact that, currently, I would much rather spend my time planning for science than on any effort to replace this sofa. Given this, perhaps my sofa should be near the front door of our homeschool for all to see rather than being relegated to a back room as if it were an embarrassment.

So, it has been almost 20 years and long gone are the days that my husband lulled our son to sleep on this sofa. Now when my 14 year old stretches his lanky body across it, you can hear the sofa’s arms creak with the slightest of pressure. Consequently, I am sure that it won’t be long before we are forced to get rid of it, but when that day comes, I’ll not be embarrassed to have passersby see it on the front lawn as it awaits the rubbish truck that will haul it away. Instead there will be, I am certain, more than a twinge of sadness; it is on this sofa that my family shared late night Christmas eve fare; it is on this sofa that we read The Cricket in Times Square, Freddy the Detective, The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle, The Hobbit and many others; it is on this sofa that we watched each episode of Stargate Atlantis at least three times. I could go on, but I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say, when my sofa goes, along with it will go not only a part of my family’s history but a symbol of our homeschool as well.