Growing Uneasiness

In less than a month we'll be moving into a new home. A big house with a huge yard.

Because we are moving into a large house we've been looking around for real furniture. Real being the key word. We have furniture, but the wood stuff is actually made of particle board and everything is fastened together with funky screws that require a hex key from Ikea. Most of the stuff we have lays on the floor, or if it does stand up, it leans. Everything leans. When you walk into our apartment you lean, just so you won't get dizzy. So our weekends are now filled with shopping for new furniture.

C. and I have had to dress up for this. He wears polo shirts (I wasn't even aware he owned that many polo shirts) and pressed khaki pants. I wear cute pressed skirts that require, of all things, slips. And button down blouses. I have worn work-type business clothes now for 4+ weeks with no casual reprieve (one exception of the denim shorts on autocross day). This isn't us. We look like we've just come from a lovely brunch at the club (rather than a precious rare breakfast at Denny's - which holds a special place in my heart because that's where we went for our first wedding anniversary). We normally wear jeans and play skirts (I wear the skirts obviously), cargo pockets and teva sandals. Sundresses and sneakers, funky t-shirts with Nirvana's "coporate-whore" mantra. We don't go to the club, we wear baseball caps and walk around the local park.

Our shopping endeavors have taken us to fancy antique malls, fancy made-to order furniture stores. It's been a whirl of Lazy-boys, Haverty's, Bombay, and then the really scary high end places. These have been the places I used to be afraid to go into because I knew that they knew that I didn't belong. I was afraid they'd catch me touching one of their fancy leather couches and toss me out into the street. I was certain everytime I entered and exited they'd search my bag to make sure I didn't make off with their overly-fancy candles made from bees who only drank the nectar of english roses or rare tulips. In short I knew they would be able to tell I was poor and therefore had no business anywhere near their doors.

Now I walk in and people greet me like they're happy I'm there. If I have a question they not only answer it, they stuff brochures and catalogs in my hand. They make me feel every swatch of microfiber and suede. They spend hours showing me the difference between ever-green and hunter-green. They ask about our families, about our jobs, they tell us amusing anecdotes about moving and the funny things their kids do to couches. The men buddy up with my husband and say:

"We have a great policy where if you don't like it after a week, you can take it back and get a new color. Great for those women who change their minds - eh *wink wink, nudge nudge*"

The women whisk me off to the tassel factory and tell me conspiratorially:

"If you get a couch in a dark color, you can have all the flowers you'd like. It was real easy to talk my husband into the lace, they never notice unless it's pink. Hehehe"

They may never touch me, but I feel like their hands are wrapping around me and my husband, patting us down to find our wallets and empty the contents of it in one fell swoop. I find myself wondering if it's bad form to bite them when they invade my personal space.

I find myself wondering even more why they think I belong there. Of course I know, it's the money, we have it, they want it. They have things to sell, we want things to buy. They create a relationship based purely on the size of my bank account, and personalize accordingly. I'm not buying my Queen Anne bedroom set from the lady at that place, I'm buying it from my friend Sue who gets her hair done at the same place I do. It scares me.

I used to buy from my friends, my real friends. I've always shopped at second hand stores where everyone knew my name and who my parents were. My Mother and I would save pennies and nickels so when school came around we could splurge on buying fashion magazines with the latest fall styles. We'd peruse each one together, picking out the things we liked, the styles that seemed the most popular, the new colors that would look nice with our complexion. Then we would raid our closets for things that were similar. If we could we'd do minor alterations to make our old things look a little fresher. We'd dye things to the new colors. And then when we'd finish with our old things we'd go to the Salvation Army or Goodwill and look for things that might be passable. My most expensive pieces were $5. Usually I got things for $0.50. My Mom and her best friend and I would go to the thrift store that raised money for the Sanitorium...they used to let you fill bags as much as you could and buy them for a dollar. I think most of the clothes were from people who had died recently. The things we outgrew we sold at garage sales and to our neighbors, who in turn sold the things their kids had outgrown. I didn't just get hand me downs from my siblings, I got them from the whole dang island.

My Mother did the same thing for furniture. Most of her stuff came from second hand stores and were restored by her own hand. Her house looks like a museum with beautiful antique pieces from Europe. She bought them at Goodwill for $50 bucks.

I started my own home that way. The few wood pieces we have are from a Salvation Army that was near our first apartment. Our china are the left over pieces from my parents wedding china, I bought a set of crystal glasses from the Goodwill, and our silver are the odds and ends of sets my great-grandparents collected. (I think they got it from odds and ends of friends' sets during the depression when everyone tried to sell anything for a little bit of food or money. Not sure though.) All the everyday stuff is from Target or the Navy Commissary. They're pretty - you can't tell that they were on sale for cheap.

I thought when we started shopping for furniture that's where we would go. I thought we'd hit flea markets and second hand shops. When my husband said "nice" (with the little pull at the end which means he wants it to be pretty) I thought maybe we'd search estate sales.

He meant brand-spanking new. So we have to dress up and make nice with the people who have to dress up and make nice with us. We've been doing this for weeks now, and I feel uncomfortable with it all. Our bank account is plush, we have the money to spend. They say it's good for the economy to spend, spend, spend. But it still feels odd hearing people tell me that, for a young couple such as ourselves, $1000 for a couch is nothing at all.

$1000 dollars still feels like four couches to me...and a few months of car insurance, the mortgage on a house. It feels like a more than a hundred meals for a man who is starving. It feels like the rent for a family who is living in their car. $1000 dollars feels wrong for one little piece of furniture. It feels wrong for two pieces. I feel wrong spending it, I feel wrong sitting in a place that expects me to spend it. I feel uncomfortable wearing my pressed skirt, with a slip, and a blouse from the mall, sitting on leather couches and microfiber chairs. Something about the way my husband fits so easily into this little cliche, the way he can easily make jokes about "the in-laws" and "the little women" bothers me. Something about the fakeness of the conversations I have to have, and the smiling I do when someone brings me an unbidden catalog makes me squirm. Something about this shopping is making me sick, and I worry that having real furniture means more than just being a grown-up, it means we're becoming a certain kind of grown-up.

And most of all I worry about the fact that what I own, what materials make up my home, what money makes up my bank account, may actually be what defines me as a person and how people will judge me.

Last week I just got a raise and a permanent position at the company I've been working in for over a year. I'm not sure I'm that happy about it.