Free

 My wife was offered a new couch. New to us, anyway. A friend of hers had a very pretty Victorian-inspired couch with a matching chair and she was giving it away. "For free." 

That was how it was presented to me. "Free." It was from this point that my questioning began. "And where is it that this 'free' couch will land?" 

"Where the old couch is," she replied, having already worked this out in advance. 

"And what about the old couch?" There was an audible silence, if there is such a thing. If my life was a sitcom, this is where the studio audience would be encouraged to snicker and guffaw. Without the laugh track, I waited in that quiet. The answer was not immediately forthcoming. 

"We could," she wanted to make the new couch and this slight hitch would not get in the way, "put it," another long pause, "downstairs?"

This was as much a question as an answer. It showed up as the challenge point, since the old couch was as much a part of our family as any of our pets and more than just about any of our furniture. It had been purchased for a song at a Sears warehouse and moved into our living room with much sweat and strain by burly men who cursed our front stairs and were glad to be done. That was a long time and a dog ago, and when it finally came time to surrender to our empty nest need for "grownup furniture," we bought a matching sofa and loveseat, again for a song. 

The old couch was wrestled into what used to be our son's bedroom, and it quickly became apparent that the way I had once manipulated its mass to construct forts for our New Years Eve celebrations came in handy. Nonetheless I understood the curses of the delivery men so many years before. There it became a periodic guest bed, though folding it out into its convertible form only confirmed its best and most comfortable shape: that of a couch. A great place for a cat nap, especially for the cat who could often be found napping there. 

But now it was time for progress and fashion. Sentiment was out the window. "How about we see if there's a place that will haul it away?" She made the arrangements, and after much grumbling and huffing and puffing, the old couch was moved once again. Out of the house and down the stairs. Eventually it came to rest out in front of the house, where we had been told the couch removal team would come and extract it in just a couple days. Meanwhile, my wife and her cousin made the trip to San Francisco to collect the new used furniture. The chair and couch were much easier to carry and required few if any curses. 

When the day came for the couch extraction, the crew looked at it and saw all the miles that old fold out had on it and they fled. Without the couch. My wife had been waxing nostalgic about our old friend, and was now recommitted to finding a place for it. 

Downstairs.

So once again, we hefted the beast up the driveway. A big turn into the barn doors and onto the somewhat finished floors installed by our son. We are now a three couch household. One for me. One for her. One for the cat. 

And best of all, it was "free."