I will miss you, dear recliner.

I am not a sentimentalist. Call me a romantic, maybe. But definitely not a sentimentalist. Or so I always thought. But as I composed my thoughts to write this piece, I started questioning my own self. I checked with a few people I know and none of them exhibited the sense of attachment I bear to many non-living entities. Maybe some of you can help me understand this better.A few months ago, we decided to sell our much loved recliners and replace them with a nice and cool sectional set. Simple enough. We picked out the sectional, placed the order and waited impatiently for 2 months for it to be fulfilled. This past week, we were informed that the new furniture had arrived. I had to sell my old ones by the end of the week. I listed them on craigslist. As I created the listing, I felt a small pang of nostalgia. I started getting queries almost instantly and this evening, two of the couches were taken away. As the buyer came in to pick it up, a part of me wanted to push them away and hug the old and used couches. Weird as it may seem, I felt this huge sense of attachment to these objects. I asked my son and wife if they had any such feeling. Nope. None whatsoever.We are in the process of selling our 7 year old car. It has seen 75K miles and we are looking to replace it with an electric vehicle to make use of the much valued carpool lane in the Bay Area. I have identified the buyer and hope to sell it in the next few days. I cant explain the overwhelming sense of loss I am starting to feel about the car. It is just a car for crying out loud. But I cant shake the feeling of loss I am experiencing.Apartments and houses I have lived in are perfect candidates for this attachment issue. Even apartments where I spent a year bear a special place in my heart. But none of these come anywhere close to my attachment to my house back home. Every time I make a trip to India and then prepare to leave, I have my ritual of saying goodbye to every single room in my house. It is not just my parents but the house that feels like a living and breathing testament to my childhood.And that brings me to the root of it all. The recliner is not what I am attached to. I am attached to the memories we made as a family on them. The hours I spent with my baby rocking him to sleep. The hours the three of us tried to squeeze in together. The innumerable times my friends fought over the prized 4 seats. The countless hours I told stories to my son on those recliners and the very many hours I watched my wife and son doze off in peace on it.The car was there before my little guy was born and has seen the longest and most enjoyable trips we have made as a family- with our parents and then with our boy. It talks of the long drive back in the rain from Niagara with my in-laws. It speaks to me of the very many times my parents, wife and son dozed off after a long trip while I drove in silence. My apartments each tell their own unique stories of a phase of my life that is special. And they all come rushing back when I am am harmlessly filling in my old addresses for some verification process. I smile as I see every address being written in. It is as if they are reminding me of the joys I had living in them.Some of you are reading this and muttering loudly, "Wuss!."I counter back, "Is this not what the beauty of life is all about?"Goodnight folks while I go back to spending the precious last few hours on my dear old recliners.