Sofa, So Good

My wife, Cathy, is a woman of patience and goodwill. She looks for the positive spin on just about anything and is usually right. But I think I have found something that lies at the bounds of her good nature. That something has good bones, lanky arms, big feet, plays the strong, silent type and is there to cushion the falls of family members. It’s getting old and could really use some new threads. It was once reasonably fashionable but now just looks a bit tired and soft in the middle.

No, I am not talking about me, though the descriptors are worryingly apt. 

I’m talking about a sofa. Not just any sofa, mind you. My elder child and their partner moved south for work about a year ago and, as we were helping them relocate, they happened to wonder out loud what they should do with their living room furniture set — couch, chair, love seat. Without even pausing to give it any real thought, I said I’d be happy to take them and that I would reupholster them. It is a lovely set, though very worn, and I thought it would make for a great winter project. They agreed and were keen to see the pieces go to a good home and get a new lease on life. I didn’t really have a space in which to do the work or the right tools for the job — or the skills. But these seemed minor impediments at the time. I borrowed my friend Norm’s truck (and Norm) to move the three pieces into my basement. I then borrowed two worktables from Norm, as well as Norm’s staple gun and Norm’s air compressor. Really, I should have just paid Norm to do the things. 

Anyway, I was set. I got a great start on the chair. I took off the old fabric, removed all the old webbing, padding and burlap, pried out the old staples. I got that baby down to the studs. I did some drawings to mimic the existing fabric pattern. I sourced new fabrics. Everything was lining up nicely and it was still just early October. 

Then I had to go away for work in the late fall, so that derailed me a bit. After that, well, it was Christmas and the holiday season. I mean, who gets anything done over Christmas, right? January and February got hectic, somehow, and then we went to Vancouver to visit our other kid. After that, there was a ton of planning that needed to be done for a late spring cycling vacation we were taking with some friends. And then the weather turned nice and, come on, you can’t expect me to spend all day in a basement when the sun is shining.

So, you can imagine my shock the other day when Cathy asked me what I planned to do with the three pieces of partially disassembled furniture clogging up our basement family room and making it look like an IKEA test lab, abandoned after someone pulled the fire alarm. I asked her what she meant. 

“Well,” she said, “it has been over a year and it doesn’t look like you’re making much progress down there. The only thing that’s changed is that our basement is basically unusable.”

Naturally, I protested. There was no way it had been a year. It felt like I’d just started and was making decent headway. She showed me the calendar. There’s nothing as deflating as having no rebuttal. 

Well, that’s not quite true. I do have a rebuttal. It is philosophical, even metaphorical. However, the problem with my rebuttal is that it is philosophical, even metaphorical. 

I have always been kind of handy and have written before about how stupendously handy my father was. The guy could, and did, fix everything. I don’t think I inherited his level of skill for fix-it jobs, but I certainly inherited his belief that it’s worth trying for yourself before conceding defeat and handing things off to a professional. I also inherited from somewhere an unbalanced synthesis of self-belief and skill. My dad figured he could fix most anything and he had more than enough ability to justify that confidence. I figure I can fix most anything and I have just enough ability to think I’m capable of more than I probably am. It’s an unpredictable combination. 

So the issue is this: The couches sitting in the basement are not just a project. They represent a way of being. They speak of doing things for yourself, even if you’re not that good at them and even if they don’t always get done properly. Sometimes they just don’t get done at all.

Part of the desire to reupholster the furniture is rooted in the fact that my dad (who died young) did precisely this kind of work throughout his career running his own glass and trim shop. I spent countless hours in his workshop as a kid, hanging out, sweeping up, playing hide-and-seek with my siblings amongst the rolls of fabric, having staple gun fights (hey, it was the early ’70s), all the while listening to the whirring clickety-clack of his old Pfaff Industrial sewing machine speeding up and slowing down. It was a beast, that thing, and it jutted out of his workbench like an anvil sitting on a dining room table. If there is one sound that connects me to my childhood and being in my dad’s workshop, it’s that. 

So, yes, the obvious interpretation is that I want to reupholster these couches because, I don’t know, maybe it’ll make me feel closer to the father I lost? That it’s a way to subtly — and probably only to me — honour his memory and all that he gave me? Or maybe it’s a way to prove that the effort he and my mother put into raising me wasn’t a complete waste of time? I suppose that the furniture project has elements of all those things to it. 

But it’s more than that. Or less, depending on your point of view. Let’s just say it’s something different than all that. For whatever reason, but surely again due to the influence of my parents, I have always believed there is genuine value in doing things for yourself. And this isn’t just about special projects. It applies to anything. Cutting the grass. Making your own meals with real food. Fixing your clogged drain. Shovelling your driveway. Basic hammer and screwdriver handiwork. Doing your gardening, laundry, ironing, vacuuming. It hardly matters what you’re doing, more that you’re doing it. Or at least attempting it. It’s partly about competence (trust me on that one) but I believe it’s more about agency, about independence, about taking this brief span we have on the planet and making the best use of it. 

Maybe I think this way because I’m a philosopher at heart. Or maybe it’s because I’m just so bored cutting the lawn for the 848th time that I’m daydreaming about ways to make it matter. 

The truth is that just about anything can be a metaphor for something else … including hunting for metaphors. Anyway, that’s one rabbit hole I don’t want to descend, even metaphorically. Suffice it to say that wanting to reupholster the couches isn’t just about reupholstering the couches. And perhaps even my relaxed work pace on the project is not just laziness and procrastination, but something deeper and more profound. 

The more life experience that gathers around my feet, the more I realize that any activity we undertake that connects us to ourselves is simultaneously an activity that connects us to our past — a past we can consider with some melancholy, perhaps for its passing, but also some joy for having had the experience. You’re cutting the grass the way your dad used to cut it, in the same diagonal rows then doubling back? You’re marinating salmon the same way your mum used to, with rye and brown sugar and soya sauce? If so, you’re not just doing yard work or making Sunday dinner, you’re honouring everything the people in your life have given you. 

Despite that profundity, those couches are still splayed out in various states of disrepair in the basement. For the next project, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to start looking for efforts that require a smaller footprint. Anyway, this project is currently behind schedule, I admit, even if it is so much more than just a stalled project. 

Cathy is perceptive and alive to these sentiments. She gets it. But to her point, even though it took more than 20 years to build the Great Pyramid of Giza, the ancient builders eventually got around to finishing it. I don’t want to take quite that long. And I’m not arguing the point — the project has to come to an end, one way or another. Though when it does, when those couches are done and out of the basement, there will be another project, then another and another. And I will be thankful to have them.