When I walked into Daniel Nachman’s office for the first time in November 2011, I had no idea that choosing to plunk my post-op behind at the head of what looked like a low, well-worn “couch” was scandalous for any number of reasons. Not only am I not afraid of “intimacy” in a professional therapeutic setting, but I was post-op the nine-hour procedure that saved my life.
I had little core strength, so “speaking up” from a client chair six or seven feet away was difficult, plus the style of those club chairs … I knew I’d be seriously uncomfortable. Heaven help how that man held it together when, twenty minutes in, after asking if it was OK to take off my shoes, after asking if it was OK to sit cross-legged … I grabbed the pillow upon which another client would lay his or her head & clutched it to my stomach that was growing weary with the effort of sitting up and talking.
Four years or so later, after that ratty old black velveteen had become my second home, I walked in to find it gone and in its place, a very nice but very large, overstuffed custom-looking thing that spooked me so much, it took me at least five minutes of sitting across the room in the farthest of the club chairs like a cautious cat before I agreed to lie down.
More disconcerting was the upholstery on this … thing … was obviously a furniture maker’s version of my signature animal print:
Leopard.
I don’t know if I said so that day, but it didn’t take me long to get a very strong impression that this was no floor model he randomly fell upon at Rooms to Go. More like a purposeful purpose with intent:
Two years previously, after one of the seats was damaged, he gave me those burgundy club chairs. When I asked why he’d broken one of the cardinal rules of the practice of psychoanalysis, he said, “Consider them to be transitional objects.” Like a teddy bear but far laden with meaning beyond that of any stuffed toy, even one gifted by a doting grandparent.
And so one day, I said to him, less than a foot from his face, not so much a question as a statement:
“Never mind, I’ll never have a practice of my own … you bought this couch for me.” He just smirked behind his whiskers, eyes twinkling.
We never mentioned it again.
By the time he died, I’d forgotten my initial distrust and grown used to the new chaise, so the week after he died, I smuggled out its matching pillow, knowing full well by then that I’d never have the funds to earn any degree that would qualify me to practice, so that pillow was the final transitional anything left of the man who changed my life.
Fast forward five or six years, and the chaise remained, abandoned by his widow and sold to his psychiatrist friend, Howard, who had no use for it whatsoever … but who had done me a Freudian solid unawares.
I’d been getting ear seeds from the acupuncturist, whose office was on the opposite wing of Daniel’s and Howard’s office, and I would hobble over on my forearm crutches to lie down and soak up the energy. Howard was in that day, so I braved a hello and asked to talk to him for a minute. He told me how rude Dan’s widow had been and how callous it felt to have to pay for something she didn’t care about. That he’d never, ever rent out that room, nor would he stand for anyone scraping Norm’s gold gilt misspelled identifying credential from the front window.
Daniel J. Nachman
Psychodynamic Psycotherapy and Psychoanalysis.
And then he agreed to sell me the chaise for $350 if/when I “managed to scrape up the cash.”
Not only did I not have anywhere near that kind of money, let alone hope of procuring it. I also had no idea how I’d ever find a place for the thing in my ancient single-wide trailer … until now.
In one month, I’ll have the first of two total hip replacements, and in anticipation of it being seriously difficult for me to navigate and recuperate in my own home, considering the clutter that accrued over five years of increasingly impaired mobility, my friend from Chicago swooped in and took the place from “This will be pretty nice if you ever clean it up” to a place I didn’t know it could go.
And because one of the few things she pushed me to discard was the rattier of the two recliners with genuine La-Z-Boy mechanisms but horrific 1970s tan upholstery that my husband bought a month or two after that nine-hour lifesaving surgery, I’d soon have room for something else. Something different. Nicer. Quirky if at all possible.
And then last night, it hit:
Pitch the better recliner, too, honey, and you’ll have room for Daniel’s chaise.
Room, I have. Handyman to move it, I have. Rental truck reserved with no cancellation charge.
All I need is $350, “and it’s yours.”
I might have had the money a couple of months ago, but I needed to buy cleaning supplies, and a small piece of plywood for a small repair, and a faucet for my handyguy to install. Then the old faucet gave way, and I had water running, at least half a gallon per minute, for forty-eight hours because the property manager refused to answer either office phone or email.
Then it was handing my debit card to cover Handyguy’s plumbing haul from Lowe’s plus a slab of countertop and this and that, and pretty soon, my not-really nest egg had more than a pinhole in its shell.
The final water bill wasn’t as bad as I thought. Only fifty percent more than normal. I do have a new client (probably), but I need her retainer to cover paint and curtain rods … and food. It’ll be months until the client I call my high-end world traveler business guru will have more work, and there will be plenty … but not in time to rescue the chaise before I’ll be incapacitated for almost six months. Three months for Hip #1, three more for Hip #2.
I dropped my acupuncturist a note asking her to “light candles” … or “put a few drops of your favorite essential oil into the aromatherapy mister in your office.” She wrote back, telling me to give her the check. That she’ll include it with her rent and tell Howard’s office manager so I can just waltz in, handyguy in tow, rental truck ready, never mind “double checking with Howard,” who I deem to be flaky as the day is long and weirder than all get out … but a mensch nonetheless.
Besides, the day he said I could buy the chaise, he got up from his desk, unprompted, chose something from the cluttered display on his side table, and handed me a photo. Of Daniel Nachman. In tennis shorts.
I never knew his knees were that bony.
But now I have an accurate visual, one far different than the memories in my head and heart, but Daniel, just the same. He’s been watching over me ever since, perched on the shelf next to this recliner – the ratty one – where he’ll continue to watch from a proper photo display after my Chicago friend cuts down my six-foot bookcases into a pair of forty-eight-inch to create wall space to finally display my grandmother’s watercolors, discarded by my mother as “inferior” to her oils of boats, but more precious to me than any teddy bear … and Dan.
The chaise is mine, providing I’ve learned enough from Mr. World Traveller Business Guru to write a loan proposal for that $350 – plus fifty bucks to cover the U-Haul – and turn a wellwisher into a stakeholder. Because my future is about to take a dramatic turn for the better, even if I only have the nicer recliner and a hopefully quirky chair.
But oh, how much more could I finally accomplish as a writer – and a human being – if instead of a quirky chair in which to rest my heart and brand new hip, it was Daniel Nachman’s overstuffed leopard-esque bought for his never-ever credentialled protégé chaise upon which said protégé dreamed out loud, three times a week, for the last six months of their time together
… and his life?
Featured image: Stock photo, Sigmund Freud’s Office
