They say that memory is the first thing to go, but I find that aging is
more easily measured by the things that arrive. Like today, when we took
delivery of the first reclining chair I have ever personally owned.
I’ve always felt that buying a recliner would be the final step in giving in to
couch-potato-hood, a state I find it too easy to enter as it is. But
there it is, and here it is. I’m sitting in it as I write.
It’s a quintessential “daddy chair”, a big wingback on stout wooden legs that
reclines until it takes up three times as much space. Even Nero Wolfe
would be comfortable in this chair.

But the fact that we bought a recliner is nothing next to a more
insidious change: we’re starting to buy decent furniture. No longer does
“furniture shopping” mean picking up a couple of cheap bookcases at Ikea.
Instead, it means spending three hours looking at fabric samples and
still having to flip a coin to make the final choice.

Of course, I can still remember when furniture shopping meant going to
lumberyard to pick up some cinder blocks and particle-board to make
bookshelves.