Ikea

 I moved into my current house in 2012. When I did so, many Beverlonians urged me to go to Ikea in Stoughton to get some good, cheap furniture. I told them I wouldn’t go—because I’d been there a lot in the summer of 2009—which was an un-fun time to be me.

In the summer of 2009, my boyfriend Sean and I were clearly about to breakup. Meanwhile, Irving Liss—owner of Hilton’s Tent City and honorary Jewish Grandfather to all of us Hilton’s kids was dying of brain cancer. There were a few other things going on, none of them pleasant but it didn’t matter because these two—especially Irving’s dying—were the main events for the summer of 2009.

Meanwhile, the mattress that Sean and I had been sleeping on was clearly on its last legs. We’d tried the Sleepy’s in Central Square and found it too rich for our blood—so we were off to Ikea. In hindsight it seems ridiculous—we were barely sleeping on the same mattress as it was.

We bought a bed and a mattress and then had to go back to return the mattress. Even falling apart as we were, we still enjoyed Ikea and laughed about how we’d somehow collected lots of  $1.00 glassware and $3.00 cushions when we were supposed to be there for a bed and later, in the assembly phase, how Ikea’s instructions were just fine as long as you had a friend with a pencil behind his ear.

I remember driving down to return the mattress on the Friday night after my birthday. Instead of taking the directions off of Sean’s iPhone we were taking them off of mine—because my phone and my iPod had died at the same time a week before my birthday. Neither of us joked much on the ride down to return the mattress. The next day we talked about it with Irving and Joan at Irving’s rest home as if all was well between the two of us—oy vey! What a pain it is to find a new bed! It was the last time I saw Irving alive. A few days later Sean broke up with me. Part of the break-up conversation included discussing Irving and his hope that I’d be his “date” to Irving’s funeral. I was very hurt and upset but I believe my response was  “well of course.”

It’s safe to say I have issues with Ikea. When my current boyfriend suggested we go there to get some furniture, I mentioned these issues. I told him I was scared that if we went there together to buy furniture, we’d break up in a few weeks—not because it was rational—just because that had been my experience.

Tonight one of my friends talked about renovation she wants to do on Facebook. She recommended that I go to Ikea and get one of the prefab kitchen designs because it would be just right for my kitchen. Besides, she was sure I knew a handy dude who could install it (that would be my current boyfriend.) When she mentioned Ikea, she touched a sore spot on me, but I suddenly realized two things—1) the soreness was more about my friend Irving dying than about the ending of my last relationship 2) The right thing to do is to..well.. get over it. Ikea didn’t hurt me—people did. I should go down there with my current sweetheart and buy a bed big enough for both of us the Labrador and anything else that catches our fancy—be it kitchen islands, cheap glassware, or bizarrely named Swedish chairs.