Lion and Magic Boy

Yesterday, Saturday, we went to Ikea. Understand, I love Ikea. But I usually go there on weekdays. In the morning. Apparently, most people don’t. Which is totally fine by me; I’m not one for crowds. Being in a crowd of people, to me, is like intentionally setting fire to yourself. At some point, you have to stop and ask yourself: Why? Why subject myself to this?

So. There we were, in Ikea. Amid the crowds. There was a sale! And live musicradiopeopledancing!! So. There we were. Thinking about a bed for Eric. Which I bought. I may regret this, since his crib keeps him contained, at least when he’s in it, but he’s going to have to move to a big boy bed eventually, and his oldest sister wants it for her own purposes, so there you go, that explains why I bought the very simplest wood bed platform-thing which I plan to use minus its legs, at least at first, because I will likely be unable to count the times after the first week that he falls off the thing.

All through Ikea in the livingroom section, Nathaniel kept suggesting sofas and chairs he thought would be better than our current selection. I agreed, but we’re not in a position to buy all new furniture, even in relatively reasonable Ikea terms. One day, I am sure that something modern would like to join the few Ikea pieces we already have, but as long as Eric is wiping his nose on the couch when he climbs up on it, what’s the point?

We also needed a lamp. The livingroom had a floor lamp, an amber and black torchiere-thing, that Eric broke months ago, rendering it, uh, broken. So it stands there, lifeless. And broken. It was time for a new one. In the lamp area I told Nathaniel to find one. We discussed the relative merits of various lamps, most of which I dismissed because of not meeting my first criteria, which means they had visible wires. Who designs a lamp where you can see the wires trailing down the center pole? I don’t care if it costs $7.99 or not (actually the $7.99 is probably the reason for the trailing wires in the first place), it’s not worth it to have something you hate because you can’t not look at the wires.

And then he showed me The Lamp. It’s totally not what I would have chosen on my own, but I instantly saw the possibilities, even though I wasn’t sure it met the second criteria, which is that it must be Eric-proof. So we put it in the cart behind Eric.

Not long after, Nathaniel came to me with this other lamp, this sort of free-form colored glass thing, and he was suggesting places in the house it might go, at least if we got rid of a whole lot of other stuff we have that “wouldn’t go”.

So then I indicated the lamp already in the cart and said, “We could design our whole house around a lamp,” and you should have seen that boy’s eyes light up!

We bought the lamp, and the other lamp, and also a rectangular clear glass vase that’s going to contain a Lucky Bamboo plant, rather a sculptural thing on its own, and Nathaniel was looking at art for the walls also, and held up this one, and inexplicably, this one, and at one point held up this round one, and each time I’m all, “Yes, but where will it GO?”, to which he had no answer.

When we got home, though, it was a different matter.

Oh, did I mention that in the morning Nathaniel rearranged the furniture? Yep, he roamed through the house measuring things, and then he sat down and drew a diagram of the livingroom/diningroom area (not to scale, he explained to me, though it looked pretty good), indicating how he planned to place the couch at an angle in the room. Skeptical, I told him he could move it (thinking we’d just be moving it right back), but do you know, it looks better that way, and changes the energy flow in the room?

So when we got home from Ikea I put together our new lamp and discovered that we had naturally forgot to procure bulbs for it, but here was Nathaniel going through the house telling us the things that no longer “went” now that we had the lamp, and do you know, he was absolutely right about this? Not only that, but he pointed to the space above the fireplace, that presently contains a picture that hung about the “hi-fi” in my childhood home, and said, “There’s where the round one goes!”

And you know? He’s absolutely right.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he decided to be an interior designer.

P.S. You can probably get him at this point for pretty cheap should you be needing some design work. Might as well now, before he gets all famous and all.