The Couch

The couch that sheltered me was originally plaid. Green and burgundy and navy blue. It was there for the first Halloween when I wore a silk toga. It was there on Mondays when we gorged on Doritos and Jack Bauer. It supported my best friend the night she passed out on the stairs and kept me alive when my lungs gave out. I came back to that couch when I played my first hooker; my only hooker to be exact. They came back after softball games, lock –ins, missions. I learned to make the family sized macaroni and cheese on that couch – if you make the regular size those boys eat it all and you don’t get any. Our band came back to that couch. Our friends grew babies in their bellies on that couch. Gorged on Cheetos, spent Super Bowls on that couch. I watched The Torpedoes rise to fame from that couch. It was a safe place for us all and then the couch moved.


Still plaid and still safe, it took up residence in a new room. I saw it less but loved it more. It flooded us with old memories, helped create new ones. It made me smile. My first night in Richmond, I feel asleep on that couch; too many $13 Martini’s found in a Richmond magazine. We laughed when the cat curled up in the foot rest. It was her shelter too, I suppose. We laughed ‘til we cried over “lean pockets” and comics on that couch. I listened to the noise of the cars going down the great avenue and knew: in this place, at this time, on this couch, I was home.

The couch moved again. Several times in fact. It saw us through loves found, loves lost, puppies adopted. Moves to new places, new jobs, horrible jobs, weddings, vacations – life. People came and people went and it eventually settled on Strawberry. It supported us when we discovered Guitar Hero. We sang “Carry on my wayward child, they’ll be peace when you are done..” The couch loved everyone. It wore thin and stretched out, got smelly and still, new roommates, the cats, the dogs, the Olive Garden troops and their bands came to sit on it. To love. To rest there.

It moved again and, as so often happens, everything began to change. The couch was reaching its end in the dark country room. We gathered, instead, on cold bar chairs round tables of beer. We married, we moved, we drove and we flew. We graduated and left. We tried and came back. The couch as it was could no longer be found. But the shelter it gives is always around, spirited to another. It’s morphed and it’s changed and its knowledge has grown. Its cushions are still worn but its heart twice as big – our circle is larger. The couch that shelters me now is beige. When my eyes fill with tears, it cradles me with soft blankets and lets me rest. It gives us strength. It offers respite. When we’ve played too many Quarters and had too much to drink. When the pizza is gone, we’ve laughed ourselves tired and emptied into each other; the couch stands resolute, open arms, a soft place to land.

The couch will change again. That’s one thing I know for certain. Maybe it will be leather, maybe it will be white. It will grow old, filled with love. It will hold children someday; hopefully some will be mine. It will shelter aging bodies, receding-grey hair, new pets and a stock pile of memories. Dreams. I dream that it will always be there. The plaid couch of our beginnings. And I, for one, will always run to it. Our safe place. Our shelter. My home.

The Chronicles of a Blonde Italian

Have you ever been interviewed? Nerve racking.  Isn’t it true that you’re knowledgeable on a subject until someone interviews you? Then suddenly your once bursting brain is vacuous, your palms are sweating & you’re reduced to a bubbling child with the makings of a stutter you never knew you had. In preparation, you come up with all these great wisdoms & funny one liners you’re going to immortalize. They sound great in your head but the second they pass your lips you regret it. Case in point: senior year book quote– “writing music is engraved on my heart”. If I could take that back, I would a thousand times over. It’s too esoteric. It’s something a an important composer like Irving Berlin would say. Not an 18 year old from Virginia tinkling the keys in a practice room filled with sound proofing cotton & an out of tune piano. Nonetheless, I said it. No biggie. It’s just another inconvenient stain on my dignity.

There is, however, an interview on record that I remember fondly & without too many foul ups. It happened in college when our SAI pledges were made to interview us. Of the hundred questions asked me that semester, two stick out in my mind: Where do you see yourself in 10 years? And if there was a movie made about you what would it be called? As it stands, the vision of myself in 10 years remains the same, only I’d like to tack on three years, seeing as how it seems I’m about to start over. But I remember distinctly the answer to the latter question. My movie would be called: The Chronicles of a Blonde Italian.

A blog may not be a movie but when I decided to put pen to paper [fingers to keyboard] & write my diary out loud, I could not think of a better blog name. Chronicles is a word I aspire too. It implies adventure, mass experience. Your basic bullet point list of everything you do made slightly more interesting by its elevated nature in vocabulary. Blonde – if you’ve seen me, you know. Let’s not talk about what happens when I have kids & my roots get too dark to color “naturally”. Italian – One word. Awesome. You get to eat, drink, be merry, jolly & loud & still genuflect on Sunday mornings with the good Catholics of the world & be forgiven.*

So I am beginning. I have no idea what will come. Most likely a plethora of blather with a dash of substance thrown in.  So if you’re bored with a computer & nothing to read, you can visit my blog. I may or may not be able to entertain you. Good luck with that.

Ciao,

CBI

*To my Family: I’m just kidding about the genuflecting thing. Poetic license, if you will. You guys are all really inspirational Christians & probably have very little that needs to be forgiven. I, on the other hand, am still working on that. Bare with me? Te Amo.