I took my son to Ikea this week.
He’s about to sign a lease on a flat of his own. His first real home, and I’m as delighted for him, as I am heartbroken for me.
How can the boy who bawled at poor old Charlotte, stoically meeting her fate at the end of Charlotte’s Web, the nervous five-year-old, who stood at the garden gate waiting to welcome friends to his birthday party, be moving into a two-bedroom apartment with a balcony, and wooden floors and fitted wardrobes!
Now he’ll never come home.
I didn’t. At sixteen, going to dance school, I went into what was called ‘digs’. A spare room in someone’s house, usually an older widowed lady, serving greasy bacon and eggs, in a front room with lots of lace and knitted toilet roll holders. But I still never went home.
No, there’s no hope. And obviously he needs furniture.
I’m aware, mum.
He says this to everything. He says it so much, his twelve-year-old brother has started saying it.
You need to tidy your room, M, I say. Victor is coming around.
I’m aware, M will murmur, not looking up from his on-line chess game. Victor, by the way, is our robot vacuum cleaner, and I hands-down prefer him to any of my son’s real friends. He doesn’t have ‘allergies’ for example and he’ll eat anything you put in front of him – which is exactly the problem.
The phrase is almost as infuriating as, I’m about to do it.
I’m sure you know that one, right?
Anyway, the older son gets the keys to the apartment this week. The first week of August.
How long do you think it takes to get - say for example - a bed, delivered, I ask as casually as I dare.
I’m aware …
Six weeks, I fire back.
That made him sit up. That made his younger brother do a double take, from his brother to me, and back again … We must take our victories where and when we find them.
We’ll go to Ikea, I said and sallied out of the room, calling back to my daughter, And can you please …
I was about to, she finished.
We got to Ikea. We had lunch. We had the chocolate mousse thingy in the little glasses. We had as many free top-ups of coffee and sugary drinks as we could manage.
Then we started.
And that’s when I noticed. The staggeringly high ratio of pregnant women in Ikea. Have you noticed that? And yes, anyone pregnant in my world, is a woman, not a person, not a chest-feeder, not a uterus holder – a W.O.M.A.N. And every third one is pregnant, pushing a trolley loaded with crib-bumper sets and flat-packed dangly mobiles and a packet of hideously patterned paper napkins, she grabbed on the way in.
Until you get to the kitchen department. Then the median age jumps by about twenty years, and you find couples, the state of whose relationships can be gauged by the level of interest they’re showing in the 3D generated image of what their new kitchen will look like.
Sofas? The bed-settee section attracts very young people. Student age people.
The fitted wardrobes? Mostly women, average age thirty I’d say, all in the same trance-like state, as they slide shoe-shelf, after shoe-shelf, open and closed, open and closed.
But what I’d never noticed before, is the lack of older people. I’d even go so far to say, the lack of middle-aged people. People like me!
When I did notice, it hit me like a thunderbolt.
Ikea is no country for older women.
You know why? We’re too wise.
We’ve been there. We’ve wheeled trolley loads of picture frames and drawer dividers, cheap Christmas decorations and ugly reading lamps, home.
And did it make our lives smoother and happier? Were we more fulfilled?
Did walls of photographs, ever stop children from growing up and leaving? Did we even look at those photos much, if at all? Or did we just curse the way no one else in the house noticed the dust they collected?
Did we read more? Did we nestle into that nook of an armchair, and angle that lamp just so, over our hardback copy of A Tale of Two Cities, the way we’d envisaged.
No, we did not.
And we didn’t because Ikea, like most things, is built on a dream and by middle-age, we have woken up and smelt the coffee.
I like to think this isn’t just the cynicism that comes from knowing that that shiny new chrome bathroom organiser will never ever be able to contain all the products required by a teenage girl, and will, very soon, develop rust, break free of its fixings and end up, with a bunch of other stuff, shoved into the car and driven to the recycling centre – another Sunday afternoon gone.
I’d like to think there’s another brighter side to discovering that age has set me free from Ikea. And in truth I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. It was obviously on my mind, when I wrote this short (and I promise, fictional) story, Curtains At that time, I had left the father of my twins, almost immediately after renovating a house from top to bottom.
Why do we do this? Why do we pour our hopes and dreams into paint samples and fabric swatches, and sock-drawer organisers?
I could write so much more on this, and I think I will. Because in another month I’m going to be down-sizing and I can’t wait.
But let’s get back to my son. Who loved Ikea, and is probably destined to do so for a long time. He too pulled out drawers, and stood eyeing up the desks. He even wanted to go downstairs to the marketplace where pots and pans lurk. I held my ground.
One good pan, is all you need I said. The tastiest food can be created with one pan, one flame and good ingredients. And how do I know this? I know, because, I’m aware.
But we did get a bed ordered.
How long, you’re all dying to know.
Six weeks, the sales assistant said.
But do you know what my son said as we walked to the car?
Thank you. Thank you for making me do this, mum.
Oh, the sweetness of victory!
Until next time,
Cary
You can read the short story, Curtains here
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I'm a 50 year old who still loves Ikea. Am I a weirdo? Or perhaps it's just because Ikea has still yet to arrive on New Zealand shores, so when I go somewhere where they have it, it's very exciting 😀