That’s what my former mother-in-law used to say when my chilren were teething.  By the time we were married none of my ex husband’s family had their own teeth (except him), so I guess she knew what she was talking about.  Looking at my shiny, new, gummy babies, I was troubled by the inevitabilty.

But I know what she meant in a way, only I’m thinking about sofas rather than teeth.  Furniture is a trouble to get and a trouble to get rid of.  I confess I have never had a happy, adult relationship with an arm chair and now I am moving, I am once again oppressed by upholstery.

When I was a young bride, every time I thought I might acquire my own furniture my mother-in-law would find that she needed a new what the Brits call a “three piece suite”.  Since I was never really a grown-up in America I have little idea if such a thing exists there.  The British version is a sofa and two chairs all in the same fabric.

I was raised to believe that matching furniture was vulgar.  I was also raised to believe that waste was wicked.  Sadly, I worked out that the only thing that could trump vulgar was wicked. 

Before you could say Jack Robinson my in-laws arrived full of good cheer and second hand furniture.  (They also brought their own toilet paper.  I never quite understood this.  I think they were worried that their only son had married a foreign wife who might have exotic habits.) 

Each time, though, I chucked out one piece, despite the wicked waste.  A sofa and one matching chair was a misfortune.  A sofa and two matching chairs looked like carefulness.

Many years later I stood in a furniture showroom and wept. I was nearly 40 and had never bought my own sofa.

Some time around then, my husband and I acquired a flat in London.  I don’t think I can explain exactly how it happened that for several years it was empty except for a couple of foam mattresses on the floor.  I was – and am – terrified of driving in London and have never yet done it.  My husband drove, but he didn’t do furniture.  

When my mother came to visit one year we resolved we would somehow nevertheless manage to furnish the flat together.  We got the larger items (a sofa, yay! and a queen size bed) delivered, but the budget was tight and we realised we would have to move the smaller items ourselves, by bus.

One Saturday, my mother — then in her late sixties — and I walked the quarter of a mile from my house to the village bus stop with two ladder back chairs.  I had sent my elder son earlier with the other two chairs.  We would take the small dining table the next day.

The bus driver collected our money, and nodding at the chairs asked, What? Are you taking them on an outing?

In Oxford we changed buses for London. 

At London the station attendant looked really surprised when we stepped off with our chairs.  He said, It’s the strangest thing!  A guy this morning also got off the bus with two chairs!  Is there some kind of chair convention today?

Well, those chairs aren’t mine now and aren’t my responsibility, though when I recently visited the flat for the first time in nearly ten years (because, though it belongs to my Ex my daughter currently lives there) I saluted the chairs like old friends.

Meanwhile, and two sofas later, I finally have my own furniture to deal with.  I’m moving out, and I can’t keep this stuff.  In England I will only have a boat; in the US I have nowhere of my own at all, though I am still thinking a van is a good idea.  You can’t put a sofa on a van.

I fretted for a long time about getting rid of my hard and late won furniture: my dining table that seats 12 in a pinch where I served so many family meals, the solid maple kitchen table I bought with my book money, the sofa and two chairs that don’t match that I finally had when I was single again and all grown up.

Happily, my Ex is also about to move – he’s going into a new house and willing to take my furniture and keep it for me as long as I want.  I guess it might be forever, but I don’t quite have to say good bye. 

So not as much trouble to get rid of as I thought.  No novacaine required.