“Will you love this for another thirty years?”
Most people buy new furniture every few years, but Mama’s furniture is steel framed. The couch and loveseat already fits the living room and her and daddy’s bottoms; she doesn’t want anything else. “But, I want a fresh look and new padding,” she explains while handing over fabric samples the upholsterer brought to choose from.
Mama wants my thoughts about fabric choice. We look through the many swatches of colors and textures and I hate that my aunt was right when she dictated that Mama will just go back to what’s familiar. “Isn’t it true though, that we know what we like?” Mama asks. “I don’t want plaid or stripes or muted colors.” Truth is, Mama actually does want a slight variation of what she has had for 25 years.
Several swatches are marked with paper clips and in the process of choosing, it seems especially important to her that I offer my opinion. I call James over to take a look and we keep going back to the first swatch, a darker hue of color with browns and burgundy, navy blue. “Look at this lovely stripe of gold.” I think this fabric is beautiful and versatile with Mama’s light colored walls, original art, and other pieces of furniture in the room: the rockers, Dad’s lazy boy chair, the handsome grandfather clock and her prize decorative in various depths and hues of stained woods ranging from blonde to dark walnut.
That’s when I ask if this fabric is something she’ll love for another thirty years. This is what my family asks about big purchases, “Will you love this for another thirty years?” because unlike other city dwellers, my folks don’t shop–they don’t change home furnishings or vehicles more often than every few decades, if that. I no sooner speak our plumb line of reason out loud, however, and a counter in the back of my mind ticks off the numbers. In thirty years, my mother will be 100 years old.
I am shaken. Flustered, I turn away. I didn’t hear Mama’s answer. James and I are already running late for a party. Whether helping choose fabric was a stalling technique to hold me a few moments longer, or if Mama only remembered to ask me about the fabric choices just moments prior to our leaving, I need to cut our deliberations short to run up and change clothes.
My legs wobble while climbing the narrow wooden stairs up to the bedrooms that have weathered every chapter of the family’s story across four decades plus a few. With each step, the truth of the situation sets in, my mother needs to get that couch and love seat reupholstered, and soon, because the furniture will likely outlast her. We are choosing a fabric that might outlast all of us. How can this be?
My mother isn’t old. I surely am not. I see us as tall grasses, rooted in our places, alive, full of motion and vitality, and my mother now, a stripe of lovely gold against a backdrop of browns and burgundies, of navy blue waving in the late afternoon breeze. I run back into the house and give her a kiss before we leave. “I will love you another thirty years, Mama. Forever. But, I hope someone else gets the loveseat and couch.”