Dark Harbor

by Kirsten Davidson

Choosing Benjamin Moore’s Dark Harbor for the family room walls was a strategic move. I got tired of washing sweaty little handprints, pen, and scuff marks off beige walls. So, I painted over them with the darkest blue-green color I could find. I couldn’t have known then the storm brewing or the safe haven we’d find within these walls.

It was at least 12 years ago when my fancy boss remodeled his house with furniture from Room & Board. The furniture didn’t arrive in time for a party he was having. He called them up and fussed about the delay so they loaned him furniture for the party. When Room & Board reclaimed the loaned pieces, they forgot a chair. I gladly accepted when he offered it to me. Today it is a raft on which I write to stay afloat.

It’s brown with maroon squiggles and sags ever so slightly. The cats have shredded one of the arms. I drink my morning coffee here and write snuggled under an electric blanket my friend gave me to take to chemo infusions. Lately, it’s a lot of ranting about what I’ve lost this year. Some of it makes it into Substack posts where I share updates on how I’m doing, a lot doesn’t.

Streamers from my son’s 19th birthday last week still hang from the ceiling. On the heavy octagonal glass coffee table we move out for dance parties are my 12 year old daughter’s nail polish remover and nail files, her blue Stanley cup, and a wet wash cloth I gave her earlier to cool her fever. There are three remote controls. None of them work the TV.

Tonight we’ll clean it off and someone will pull out placemats and set the table. They’ll grab the votive candles from the dining table, place them in the center, and light them. Someone will choose a movie we’ve seen so many times we can quote it. Before dinner is done, we’ll pause the movie and share our “highs and lows” for the day. Ordinarily this would make me sad, sitting on the floor in front of the TV while we eat. Ordinarily this would feel like giving up. But this year it feels like leaning in.

If I could do it over, I would not choose a beige couch, but it fit the dimensions of the room. I liked the low profile and slightly ‘60s vibe. We all have our spots on the couch. And when someone comes into the room, if you’re in their unofficial spot, you’ll officially have to move. Ten years later, it’s covered with blankets and pillows that hide the dirtiest parts of the cushions. I could get it reupholstered but it would cost as much as a new couch. We could get a new couch, but at this point, it’s as much a member of the family as our lazy dogs.

Behind the couch, a painting of grey and black faded splotches covers one wall. Mostly the color of cement, the painting plays beautifully off the dark blue-green walls. The piece was a throwaway from a friend whose paintings now sell for the price of a small house. If it is worth anything, it’s probably the most expensive thing we own.

On the wall above the open shelving music console hangs a four-paneled Japanese screen that my parents bought in Japan. It was my dad’s first overseas tour in the Navy. They lived in a Quonset hut with my older brother who was a baby at the time. Each panel, a water color scene of rural Japan, depicts a different season. Those panels hung in the living room of every house we moved into and out of throughout my dad’s Navy career. They are as much home for me as this house is for my kids who have never moved.

The panels hang above an old turntable that sits on top of the music console. Next to it, a pile of whatever my husband emptied from his pockets: receipts, stickers, coins, keys. On the middle shelf are records that get changed out with the seasons and holidays. Next to these, a tuner, a tape deck, and a glass candy dish which functions as a man junk cave with screws, a silver tape measure, an industrial chain “necklace,” one black shoelace, and ratty headphones he wears when he washes the dishes after I go to bed too tired to care if the kitchen is clean.

On the bottom shelf, cassette holders from the ‘80s hold cassettes from the ‘80s. On top, as if it really were the ‘80’s, a Rubik’s Cube– which my oldest son can solve in under a minute. Next to the cassettes, the VCR sits on top of a DVD player.

My husband’s chair sits opposite mine. It’s mustard-colored valor from the ‘60s. A multicolored knitted blanket is draped over it. The chair sits on a yellow and red round, braided rug. Above the chair, an amber lamp hangs from a gold chain. It’s all just as ugly as you are imagining. On the wall above the chair is a painting of a hawk on a branch in a gilded gold frame. At night he sits under the amber glow, legs crossed, looking down the glasses on the tip of his nose and reads comic books.

In December we’ll swap out my husband’s corner for a Christmas Tree. Christmas morning the kids will take their places on the couch. My husband will hand out presents with nowhere to sit. On the glass table, a platter of croissants and Nutella. I’ll watch it all from my chair, not thinking about how it felt in January to hear “stage four,” not knowing if that Christmas had been my last.

Sitting on the couch yesterday painting our nails, my daughter asked me, “What do you want for Christmas?” I looked around.

I told her, “This.”

Kirsten Davidson is a corporate exec turned cancer patient turned loose. Having grown up around the world, she now lives in Alameda, CA with her husband and three kids who have known no other home. She currently writes about the healing, hope and hardships of living through a stage four cancer diagnosis over at Cancer Card.