My Dear Chair

We all have one. We have a chair, that when we sit, seems to hug us and comfort us and welcome us. Being there in its arms, we are comforted and sustained. Our chair is ours alone. Others have their own chairs and they know that this chair belongs to me and I, to it. Babies have their high chairs and they are, while a kind of safety prison, also where babies know they will be okay and fed and expected to be present. Babies don't have a large agenda. When we grow older, we have desks at school that are "ours", and even the teacher, asks for permission to enter that sacred space where we know we can pop in little revered items such as a favorite marble or crayon or well, you know. And then as teens, we have a special spot that is solely a place to dream and plan and weep and think and be alone. For me, the latter was the comfortable branch of an old apple tree and it's where I read books that mattered and where I could reach out and snap off a Transparent Apple, green or ripe or over-ripe, and feel as though I owned the world. And then as an adult, a worker in a profession I loved, I had other chairs, places of refuge and peace. I worked in a school as a fledgling teacher and in those days, one moved up the coffee staff room table as seniority grew. The shining wooden table was long and the end chair was reserved for the eldest woman teacher whose choirs were legendary. We called her Miss with respect and no one dared sit in that chair even when she was absent. Chairs do that. They are thrones. On my sun deck I am re-doing things and opting for a continental French look with ornate black metal benches, climbing plants and little fancy tables and chairs. The wing back rattan chair in which I sat on for sunny decades, reading, sipping tea and daydreaming, is still in fine condition in spite of winters in the snow and rain and heat of summer, but it doesn't match and it must go. None of the weavings of its former vegetation have unravelled, nor has its finish changed to a great degree but it doesn't fit The Look. Yes, it's a bit sun bleached and discoloured in places where the cushions inadvertently saved its natural reed shade, but it is sturdy though a little warped due to a period of cramped storage as I plied the world's wonders while it stayed home. When I returned, I   reminisced in its comfort, over what I saw and did. But now, on the notice board of the mail room in my building is a poster and it tells that I am giving my chair away free to some lucky person who would certainly appreciate how special it is. One must give things away I was told. But, no one will take it because everyone, said my friend, is trying to get rid of things, not accumulate more stuff!  Now that I have one of those neat swinging basket chairs, I thought, truly,  I no longer need my old rattan chair. It doesn't fit the rest of the new look. It's time to give it to someone else. But as I sat swinging in my new basket creation this morning, coffee in hand, I looked on my rattan chair across the deck and knew that this old friend and I couldn't part. We've gone through so much together. We were strangely so, friends. I got up, went down to the mail room and removed the give away poster.