Article January 27, 2014 Issue

Furnished with love

Nancy Mullen

Some years ago, when I moved to a new city to take a job, I had hardly a stick of furniture in my new apartment. What few furnishings I’d brought with me needed repair or replacement, and my bed was an old mattress directly on the floor. Nearly all of my modest earnings went for expensive car repairs and routine bills that never seemed to stop coming, so a year and a half after moving in, I had made little progress in furnishing my apartment. With the living room almost empty except for stacks of boxes, the place looked more like a warehouse than a home.

I was trying to be patient about all this, but there was a problem. My mother was eager to visit me, and she kept bringing the subject up every time we talked on the phone. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, so even though I didn’t yet have a place for her to sit or sleep, I finally said she could come in the summer. I thought surely things would work out by then.

As the time approached, I shopped every chance I could get, going from store to store in hopes of finding suitable furniture in my price range. Nothing I liked was affordable, however. On one of these frustrating shopping trips I noticed steam coming from the hood of my car while I was driving, so I slowed to a crawl and headed for the nearest service station. A radiator hose had burst and spewed antifreeze all over the engine, doing damage. I paid the $500 repair bill with a heavy heart. Yet another setback.

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Furnished with love

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