Meredith, what is your most prized possession and how did you come to own it?

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After landing my first engineering job I moved into a two-bedroom apartment in the downtown of a moderately-sized Ontario city. I didn’t drive at the time, so chose to be within walking distance of the bus station and shops. My apartment at the time was very sparsely furnished: the bedroom had a mattress on the floor, a headboard leaned up against the wall (the bed was broken), and a dresser, and the living room had a hand-me-down kitchen table with four chairs, and an old TV on the floor complete with dials (not buttons) and a bunny-ear antenna. I had student loans to pay-off, and furnishing the whole place at once was out of the question. My now husband was still in school, and a date would often consist of buying two Tim Horton’s coffees and going window shopping downtown. There was a nice furniture store with lovely yet expensive furniture that we liked to look at. One day we were in there and I fell in love with a couch. It was a floor model in red by a Montreal designer with a modular design that could change it from a chaise lounge to a regular couch to a single bed. It was on sale… down from $4600 to $3400. It was far too expensive, but it was nice to dream. And so, I would visit the couch every week or two and look at it and dream. The price went down again. And it was still too expensive. Then one day I walked into the store and the sales woman says to me in an excited voice: “Your couch is on sale!” And indeed, it was. It was on for $1094. I had a credit card limit of $1500. It was still a lot of money for me at the time, but I bought it. It was the first, and for a long time, the only piece of furniture I bought new. I still have that couch and we still refer to it as “my couch.”