this is an unusual post- a bit more self-disclosing than my usual. i debated about it. i'm not one to go full exposure on the web with the assumption of partial anonymity. anyone who knows me has probably talked with me about this topic at one time or another.
over the past couple weeks, i have had the occasion to go to ikea on twice. surprisingly, the second trip was not because i had purchased something, came home to assemble it & discovered it was missing a key part (always small & always a necessary part). i had purchased a coffee table on my first trip & then changed my mind, so it needed to be returned. part of the melancholy may have been intensified because i went up to potomac mills after the memorial service of a friend.
when i was there the first friday evening, i sat in the restaurant/cafe & did some people-watching. so many young families with small children, young couples still experiencing the fresh first buds of love, some obvious newlyweds. very few 50-somethings. some 50-60ish types- usually pushing carts & carriages & talking with high voices to the world's most perfect child. just sitting there brought back many memories for me.
i remember very distinctly my first trip to ikea. for her birthday in december, my sister requested a weekend away from her 6-month old daughter with myself & a friend. she wanted to get some furniture, as did i. we had carefully pored over the ikea catalog like people used to pore over the sears & roebuck catalog every year. we'd counted our pennies & measured our rooms. we had taken the extra seat out of the minivan (the first model) so that we would have more room to transport our treasures back home. we were pretty darn excited when we pulled out of richmond that morning. we would go to potomac mills on friday for the day, spend the night in dale city with a high school friend, motor on to tyson's corner on saturday & return on sunday, with the possibility of a return trip to potomac mills, if needed. it was my sister's first weekend away from caitlin & armand's first weekend alone as a father. at the time, we were living in va. beach & didn't have a lot of room for furniture, which worked out well so that kathy could get her stuff in the van.
boy, did we shop that weekend! by sunday, we couldn't remember what we had purchased on friday! as it turns out, about 10 years later, some friends & i would make this same trip annually in october or early november for christmas shopping for several years.
what created a lot of my melancholy the other week was remembering that time of my life. we were young, married less than 10 years, in the process of planning for children & imagining a life full of possibility. we were living with our college hand-me-downs & castoffs & i imagined a beautiful home in my mind that would one day be mine. i hadn't quite worked out a sense of personal style yet & was still trying to figure what i actually liked & what i thought i was supposed to like.
so i sat there a couple weeks ago in a very different place. at one point, it would have been almost impossible for me to walk out of ikea without a lot of stuff- little stuff, big stuff- just a lot of stuff. that is no longer an issue. when i go to ikea, it is for something quite specific. i don't need stuff. my home is furnished (with a number of ikea pieces, by the way) & a) we don't have room & b) we don't have need. c) & thirdly, my husband hates ikea. i mean, he HATES ikea. probably the fact that he is the assembler contributes to his dislike of the swedish retailer. their reputation for leaving small necessary parts out of packages contributes. the fact that something generally breaks affects his feelings toward ikea. & finally he thinks it's just "cheap shit". i disagree with that.
when i furnished my office when i started in private practice, i didn't have a lot of resources to put toward it, considering my position at the hospital had just been eliminated & that was the impetus for private practice. i also thought it would be a good idea to furnish my office with stuff that would go well with my stuff at home in case i was unsuccessful at private practice & needed to bring all the furniture home. many colleagues told me
don't skimp on your chairs & sofa. you will have lots of people sitting on them, of all sizes, & you need a really sturdy one. well, i went ahead & spend 199. for a loveseat from ikea. here it is 19 years later & i still have the same loveseat. i had it slipcovered 2 years ago. it's been great- still sturdy, comfortable (i regularly nap on it when needed- a benefit of self-employment). some of my colleagues have "better' furniture that looks worse. here is my office couch with the slipcover (& sadiedog).
as a matter of fact, my office is done almost completely in ikea. the only non-ikea piece is my lateral filing cabinet.
what fun we had, though, decorating our homes. trips up & down the road to ikea. purchasing the home not quite the home of my dreams (in my dreams) & the perfect home for us. learning my own style & following it, regardless of what was popular or what others liked. then as incomes rose, i began buying furniture from elsewhere. mom & dad downsized & we accumulated some of the family pieces. so now, when i sit in the ikea cafe, it is mostly looking back, not forward. & for some reason, that is the place where i am most aware that the family i planned does not look like the family that i have. that is the deepest root of the melancholy- the twinge of sadness. watching the young couples with their children. i would have imagined that those feelings would have been gone by now- almost 20 years later. it certainly isn't like it was- the feelings just wash over me at times.
i had just turned 35 when it was discovered that i would definitively be unable to have children. period. this discovery followed almost three years of treatment for infertility & two miscarriages. i had always assumed i would have children, had always wanted children. there was never a doubt for me about children. & it wasn't to be. for some time, i thought perhaps i was too selfish to have children. i have since decided that wasn't the case. it's just how it is.
however, not having children has allowed me to be involved in the lives of many children. i will be forever grateful to my sister for sharing her children & allowing me to be "mimimommy", as my niece calls me. i grew up with the neighborhood children & families. i remember when the kids were 3-4 years old- they had difficulty understanding how i was an adult woman (translation: mommy) & i was married (translation: daddy) without children. they didn't understand how i could be married & not have children.
i will feel those waves of sadness when all those kids marry & begin to have children & my friends begin to become grandparents. our path has been different & it has only been in the past 5 years that i have met a lot of women who are not mothers & some who don't wish to be. it is certainly easier these days when the lives of most of my friends are not so organized around the needs of their (now adult) children. i always swore i would not be the "cat woman" with tons of kitties around or one of those couples who have dog-children. it helps that many of my friends with children treat their pups the same as we do- i'm not dressing sadie in clothes & we are comfortable with boarding her when we need to do so. & we sure do love her an awful lot.
& all this from a simple coffee break in the cafe of ikea- what was, what might have been & what is. i have a good life- a wonderful life & yet, i'll always wonder......
