friendly couches

dear rory,

it is kind of late. and guess what?

I’m eating blueberry oatmeal, listening to “beautiful things” by Gungor, feeling wide awake, wishing i hadn't played my guitar until my fingers turned blue, and writing to you.

actually, I’m not really writing. I’m copying.

you see, about a week ago at babysitting, the baby fell asleep. so I dragged out my math book and slaved away for the rest of the afternoon like the model student that I am.

okay, well, not really.

I DID get out my notebook and pencil and I DID look at the cover of my math book for an awfully long time.

but I felt the need to write.

so I wrote.

and now I’ll copy it here for you. (please be warned now: this letter is just my random thoughts and musings. nothing terribly deep.)

“dearest rory,

I am writing to you from a foreign couch.

no, it wasn’t made in italy. no, I am not IN italy. it’s merely foreign because I don’t know it very well.

do I like knowing my couches? well, yes, I do. I‘m friends with many a couch.

like the couch in your basement.

I remember one of the first times your family had us Smockies over. you, Laura, and I were the Queens of the Marshpillows (a distant planet made of marshmallows and pillows). Lauren and Daniel alternated being the royal dog, and (when he wasn’t the pampered pooch) Daniel also served as part-time court jester. he had a tough job trying to amuse our royal majesties.

when we got tired of him, we queens would talk business. you promised me a diamond the size of planet earth (which, I am still waiting for, btw) and I promised you all the marshmallows you could want.

many more happy memories followed.

having late night talks, watching the Bourne and LOTR trilogies, eating pancakes for a midnight snack, listening to music, resting my head on your shoulder, playing Cranium, and hiding behind pillows during the scary parts of movies are all a big part of that couch.

I’m also friends with the couch in the Higgins’ schoolroom. when we were younger, we kids aired our own news station from that couch. I interviewed Caleb about his latest book (which, he hilariously knew nothing about) and we ended the sitcom on the floor laughing. I believe we even did a weather forecast in which every day had the same weather as the day before.

also on that couch, we took turns doing the voices for Robin Hood and Pilgrim’s Progress, we had our own tea party in which Christian was Mrs. Nesbit, and we added our own soundtrack to Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Calvin usually just rolled his eyes at the rest of us. and that only egged us on.

another friendly couch belongs to the Doves. I remember singing hymns from that couch, sharing my lyrics with whomever happened to be nearby, watching Lena play the piano as she kept time with our voices, and envying her ability to play so calmly in front of so many people.

that couch is always happy and warm.

except for the time we watched a really sad movie. it was so late at night, that I don’t remember anything about the movie other than there being a midget whose dog gets killed. oh, and I think there may have been a blind man? maybe I dreamt the whole thing. it’s possible, because I have slept on that couch. I've also been unjustly hung from that couch, built my Empire from that couch, and played ‘extreme catch’ from that couch.

oh there are so many more couches that I love!

but I just realized how odd it must seem to you that I’m rambling on about couches.

and I don’t really have much to say to that. it is weird.

I guess the reason I enjoy those couches so much isn’t because they are couches. it’s because of all the memories they hold. all the happy, smiling people I connect them to.

I think it’s cool that God designed us to attach memories to things and people.

wouldn’t it be sad if we were always forgetting the past?

wouldn’t it be sad if all couches were foreign?”

the end.

wait, the end?

okay fine, I’ll try to sum up what I was feeling then and still feel all the time.

I like memories. I like inanimate objects. I like that memories thrive in inanimate objects.

I like that memories and inanimate objects are closely tied to real live people. because I like people.

and finally, you are a people, and I like you. (not really sure what that has to do with anything, but whatever. :)

sorry for the randomness. and yet i'm not. it's good to take pleasure in the little random things of life sometimes.

like couches.

well, my oatmeal is gone. my song ended like forty minutes ago. my pillow is staring at me.

good night my dear friend!

love,
muffin