Megan’s Furniture
On Monday, we sold Megan’s bedroom furniture to a family with a little girl. Megan is my daughter, who I haven’t seen in almost 14 years except for her pictures on MySpace.
Yvette and I originally bought the furniture in early 1996 when Megan was 4 years old, anticipating that she would visit us occasionally when her and her mother moved back into town with her new dad. Unfortunately, while I got to see Megan twice that year, I didn’t bring her to our home and she never used the furniture.
Over the years, the furniture provided for a little used guest room and then an even less used backup guest room. Yvette had taken to storing her collection of Precious Moments figurines and collectables on the hutch and dressers.
The decision to sell it has been a few months coming. After Christmas, Yvette and I started our annual cleanup and finalized our decision to sell the furniture. We listed the furniture on Craig’s List and after several inquiries and two viewings, it’s gone.
Yvette was concerned that my selling the furniture would bring up some issues for me, but it didn’t. What surprised me were my remembrances, not of Megan, but how the furniture had been a staple of Yvette’s and my relationship over the years.
As I mentioned, we bought the furniture in 1996. Yvette and I were living together, but I had not yet proposed to her. At the time, we were living in a two bedroom apartment. I had to move my computer desk out of the second bedroom and into ours to make room for Megan’s bedroom set. The bedroom set followed us from the two bedroom apartment, to our mobile home. Then we moved to Austin and the bedroom set followed us to another two bedroom apartment, then our mobile home, which we had relocated from El Paso, and finally into our home that Yvette and I share today.
When the furniture walked out the door on Monday and the bedroom stood empty, a couple of things occurred to me.
- The bedroom set was our first furniture and big purchase together. Even though we were not married, Yvette and I discussed the decision before I made the purchase. Since then, we have always discussed and gotten consensus before moving forward on a big purchases.
- It was the third oldest piece of furniture or set in our home. The only pieces that are older are my heavy duty television stand, which I bought in 1989 and my dining room set, which I bought in 1990.
- In all that time, I don’t think that I ever slept in the bed for even one night. However, our moms, a couple of Yvette’s cousins, a couple of my sisters, and a niece have used the bed.
- Selling the children’s bedroom set reinforced that Yvette and I are not having children, although we had known this for a long time. We used to call the room “the nursery”, but over the years we began calling it “The Precious Moments” room. Since we love babysitting, we will need to come up with a temporary bed for those times when we get to keep “our kids” overnight.
- Finally, it’s the first time that we have had an empty room in 14 years and we are not quite sure what we’re going to do with it.
Yvette and I will always have a place in our minds and hearts for Megan; however, if she visits us someday, we may just not have a place for her to lay her head.
