The Couch Conversations

My dad had his own special place on the couch in our living room as I was growing up. Nothing too “Archie Bunker’s chair” about this situation. Just anytime the family was sitting on the couch, that was where he sat. And if you were sitting in that space at any other time, it was still known as “Dad’s space.”

Sometimes late into the night, I used to sit on the other end of the couch talking with him about many varied topics—what happened during the day that was keeping Dad up so late, politics, music, even some of the latest jokes he heard from the guys at his plant. What we never really spoke of was his own childhood. He was born in 1929, spent his early years in Philadelphia, and then moved north to the Delaware Valley area of Pennsylvania. He joined the Marines during the Korean War and was stationed in Miami, Florida, when he met my mom.

The living room in question was in North Miami Beach where I grew up in the 60s and 70s, until moving off for college.

The reason I bring up these couch conversations is that, whenever I would return home to visit after his diagnosis with multiple myeloma in 1990, we resumed these conversations as if no time had passed. One night as I was passing through the living room, I saw him deep in thought. Upon noticing me, he waved me over to sit and started to tell me what he was thinking about.

For the first time, he spoke of his childhood to me. A therapist he had been seeing asked him to think back to the first place he could remember where he felt safe and at peace. She asked him to think back to that place whenever the pain was too much to bear.

Now, Dad was no fan of therapy. In fact, this was the third psychologist he had begrudgingly agreed to see after deciding that the sessions with the previous therapists were a waste of time and that none of them understood him at all. This particular therapist, however, seemed to hit the spot with this specific exercise.

Dad told me that whenever things would get too stressful as a kid, he would retreat into the woods around his house into a hidden area just the right size to hold a kid and his dreams. There was nothing physically unique about the location—just some sheltering trees and soft grass on a rolling hill—but that was his spot. He smiled as he told me of the time he spent in his own secluded hideout. Although I know that development and the passing decades have erased this private sanctuary, whenever I am in that neck of the woods, I look off into whatever woods I see and wonder...

As we hit the mid point of our annual Summer of Respite, I think that Dad’s story makes clear that respite does not necessarily mean taking a much needed vacation away from home, but can also be found in those private recesses of your mind where peace still reigns. With a little bit of quiet time and some practice, this type of mental respite can be accessed upon demand.

Thanks to Dad, I’m still learning from our couch conversations.

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