The Red Ottoman

While the internet and the technology it has spawned are wonderful, you would do well to be prepared to be startled by coincidences and haunted by memories. Cue up Twilight Zone music as I share a memory I never expected to retrieve. When I was about 5, I used to play in my grandmother's basement with my next door neighbor, Jean, also aged 5. My grandmother’s basement was bigger than my first and second apartments combined. My grandfather was a pawnbroker so where most people stored their old clothes and suitcases or built bomb shelters, my grandmother stockpiled her next 5 televisions, record players, and vacuum cleaners, just in case. In one room, she had a round, red leather ottoman which Jean taught me to use to its best advantage. We would put a record on, turn the ottoman on its side and play circus. Clearly my grandmother was wrong thinking the ottoman’s best days were over when she relegated it to the basement. Hard to say how many years before Jean and I tired of walking on the ottoman which would roll like a fat but lumpy log. Still, the time came when I forgot about the ottoman. My Aunt Ann and her family came to live in my grandmother’s house. I went back east to visit frequently over the next 45 years. During those years I tried to prepare myself for the great pain I knew I would feel when my grandmother’s house was no longer part of my life. Then, a couple years ago Ann died and the house was sold. Not long after, I went on a sentimental walk through the old neighborhood via Google Maps, with its panoramic pictures taken at street level doing all but reproducing the real thing. The vehicle that took the pics for Google must have driven by Ann's house during the last few days of clean up for the new buyer and a picture was immortalized showing a heap of throwaway stuff including the red ottoman at the end of the driveway.

I thought seeing the picture was a coincidence of the rarest order but the weird thing is that a year or so later, when I opened Google to see the ottoman again, it was gone, the yard magically restored to suburban perfection. I guess some things, like people, are not ready to fade away all at once.