Everyone else did it, but not me. And oh boy was I resentful. I would stand in the kitchen of our open-floor plan and look over at them: feet up, back sunk into the cushions, sometimes supine. It was the heart of our little home, but I spent almost no time there. In fact, as soon as I started, I would usually have to stop. To move. To go onto the next thing.
But not anymore. I’m doing it right now actually – sitting on my couch. Yep. That’s the thing that I rarely did when my kids were toddlers and preschoolers, and the thing that I do all the time now: sit on the couch.
As soon as I sat down, Lily came over an shoved her wet nose into my hands. To her, couch time is snuggle time. She spends all day on the couch. To her, when I sit down it means I’m available. Available to give her attention. Ready to set the rest of the world aside and be where I am.
The one we had before the one I’m sitting on now was gross. It came from Darth’s bachelor pad. He’d purchased it off of a Craigslist ad and since it had suffered three cats, two toddlers, and an adult man who loved daytime naps. The so-called “bonded leather” was literally disintegrating. We found large pieces of bonded leather stuck to our pants, in our pockets, under our bedsheets.
Still we kept the couch, partly because we were saving up for a new one, and partly because we couldn’t decide which one we wanted. And then, once we decided, we waited an extra year just to be sure. (And to see if it would go on sale).
The new couch was beautiful – soft, camel-colored, pintucked leather, a chaise on the end to put our feet up – I loved it.
But I never used it. That was for the other beings who lived in my home. They jumped on it, built forts over it, napped on it, watched TV from it, drank beer while sitting on it…
But when I went into our living room, I usually sat on the floor. I didn’t even notice it until the divorce was final and Darth moved his things out of the house. My first weekend alone in the house I sat down (on the couch) and looked around. Wow, I thought, this is new. I mean, not only was the perspective from the couch one that I’d rarely seen, but in the first month after our divorce I quickly realized that I was spending more time alone in my house than I ever had when we were married.
And that equates to…more couch time!
The thing is, the more couch time I had, the more I realized something. The couch had been a big source of resentment for me during the years I was married and the years that I had little humans. When I came downstairs after putting the kids to sleep, Darth would inevitably be lying on the couch watching something on TV. And I would slip off to sneak in some yoga, or a workout, or often more work that I had not finished during the day. And every time I saw him there, my blood would boil. Was I grateful that he had a chance to rest after a long and tiring day? No way! It made me so angry to watch him sit with his back on the cushions and his feet up that I often quietly sulked off to do whatever I had to do (or felt I had to do) to decompress, or to pay the bills.
And it was happening with my kids too. I would feel myself getting so angry with them when they sat on the couch and watched television. Even just thinking about it now, my teeth clench and my shoulders rise. I always thought that I was simply a screen time stickler, upset that they were subjecting their brains to overstimulating screens and moral filth. But now I wonder if that frustration was with the screen time at all. Maybe all along it was about the fact that they were sitting on the couch! My couch! The one that I had worked and paid for, the one that never saw my butt grace the softness of its cushions.
So this post, my couch manifesto, is my clarion call to married mothers everywhere to claim your couch time. It’s so easy to be always going, always moving, always responding to someone else. It’s natural to be the first one to pop up off the couch to get someone a snack or change the channel or start dinner.
But couch time is valuable time. There’s a reason they invented couches, and not just chairs. When I sit on the couch alone now, I feel valued. The couch is the throne by which we observe the queendoms of our homes. When I sit on the couch around my family, they are drawn to me. Like Lily, they know I’m available. I’m not off cooking or cleaning or finding some other way to busy myself with the endless tasks that I tell myself need to be done in order to keep our lives going. I’m still. I’m ready to give and receive space, time, and love.
Mamas, take some time to sit on your couch today!