The delivery driver’s seat was almost completely turned to the side when he stopped. “Ma’am, I was at the kitchen counter signing the delivery paperwork.” So I looked up and said, “Yes.” He didn’t answer right away. That caught my attention.
The other boy was still holding the front of the chair, looking slightly annoyed, because armchairs are heavy and nobody likes standing in someone else’s aisle holding one sideways. The first man, whose name was Luis, according to the name tag on his shirt, crouched down beside the base of the chair.
“Madam,” he said again, more quietly this time, “I think you need to see this.” I walked there.
The old armchair was Daniel’s pride and joy, if one could call a 12-year-old brown leather armchair with a permanent indentation in the seat a source of pride. My husband spent more hours on that than I’d like to calculate: football games, golf, news broadcasts, Sunday naps. He ate popcorn on it, read sales reports, and once slept on it until 2 a.m. because he insisted he was just resting his eyes.
I had been trying to replace her for two years. Daniel always refused. “That thing can still hold up for another 10 years,” he said.
“A lawnmower, too, if you ignore the smoke,” I told him once. He didn’t like that at all.
But the week he traveled to Dallas on business, the footrest finally started to jam halfway down. He complained about it on Sunday afternoon while packing his bags. “That thing almost ripped my ankle off!”
I remember looking at him and saying, “That sounded suspiciously like permission to switch it.” It wasn’t. Which, naturally, I chose to interpret as permission. We had been married for 24 years. There are certain freedoms that you gain.
