Two strong guys took our two long, heavy couches to the dump the other day as part of a purging effort of Mary’s that I’ve warmed up to, though at times I fear I may be the next to go.
It is true, as she says, that I am a spreader, at times a superspreader, and a piler as opposed to a filer. The large dining room table (does anyone want it?) from which a leaf and three fiddleback chairs were removed recently, often is pretty much covered with 8-by-10 notebooks upon which I’ve scribbled, newspaper clippings, and old sports pages from piles that take up much of the floor space in my small office at The Star. Messiness has always been next to godlessness in my lexicon, proof positive that I’m busy, though, I’ll admit, not very organized, a trait that may be all the more evident should one’s spouse be an archivist.
Now that the couches — I almost said “coaches,” which, for me, a sportswriter who until now has had no sports to write about in the past nine months, would have been an interesting slip — have gone, I find I do like the open look.
Two chairs, one with a leather ottoman, with small round tables and lamps to read by, and a dog bed in between, are all that’s left. Very Japanesey, I say to Mary, which reminds her she wants to go there, and to California, Costa Rica, and New Zealand too.
“Thousands of frequent flier miles and nowhere to go,” I say, feigning a sigh, happy really to be here, as I have been throughout the pandemic, with her — so happy, in fact, that when she asked me, looking up from The Times’s kids’ section the other day, to describe 2020 in one word, I said, knowing full well how unutterably sad it’s been, in the United States and throughout the world, I said (and please forgive me), “Glorious.”