16-05-2025
- General
- South China Morning Post
Farewell, my pink lady, that beloved smelly but sturdy sofa
One good thing about Toronto's suburbia is that you can throw away your unwanted furniture, no matter the size – bulky or small, heavy or light – on your front kerb. But considering the municipal garbage disposal charge they make you pay it's hardly a perk.
So now, there she sits, my beloved sofa waiting to be collected and crushed into pieces, looking sad and lonely, unwanted, abandoned, almost tragic. I can see it as I type these words from my front window. It has been a faithful companion since I returned to the Canadian city from Hong Kong almost a decade ago. But our relationship began long before that. My late mother bought it before my time.
Our relationship first started when I interrupted my life in Hong Kong to go back to graduate school in the early 1990s because my dream of becoming a war journalist in Asia went nowhere. Say what you like about my pink lady, she was sturdy, definitely not the Ikea type.
The original pink cushions were worn out and long gone. I took the striped light-brown ones you see in the photo from my neighbour when he threw his sofa away. I know that's kind of gross but I didn't want to throw away the whole thing and shop for a replacement.
I laid flat on that sofa so many hours of the day for years I developed a weak back and constant lower back pain. It probably gave me scoliosis. My big yellow cat Bloomie made it worse by using me as his human pillow. One of the immutable laws of cats is that when they lie on top of you, you have to stay still for as long as they want.
Now that I have done the unthinkable with my sofa, I don't know how to feel – melancholy, uncaring, dismissive, detached …? Surprisingly to me, none of these emotions/ideations have a hold on me, so I can pick and choose. I choose detachment.
