A Post About a Chair

This post is from my own archives from a different, older blog. Watching This is Us and Rebecca’s memories of cradling Randall as the sun came up reminded me of savoring my own children in a certain chair.

(From 2014)

I am writing this so I can throw away an old chair.

When I moved to Dallas, Texas after college not knowing a soul in that city, I bought a small chair/loveseat set at Pier One for $500 total – a lot for me at the time, especially for something so itty bitty, but it fit perfectly in my first itty bitty apartment at 17878 Preston Road.  

After a year and a half I realized that even with the cold winters, it mattered to me to be near family, and the loveseat/chair set moved back with me to Illinois. They (loveseat and chair) lived (with me) briefly in my Granny Sweet’s basement and then moved (with me) to two more apartments in Champaign.

Sometime after I bought my first house in Champaign, the loveseat and chair were separated. The itty bitty loveseat went to live with my sister, and I doubt it is still in circulation. The chair remained with me but was banished from the living room at this point, having been replaced with a much bigger couch/chair set, and though this new set was much nicer, I didn’t have any emotional turmoil parting with it when its time came.

When my first house gained a husband and had a baby on the way, the chair found a new place in our itty bitty baby room. At some point it gained a huge denim chair cover.

I sat with my first baby in this chair night after night, feeding and holding him. Sometimes after he was done eating and had fallen back to sleep, I would remain there cradling him and looking at him, in this chair, promising myself I would never forget what those moments felt like. I haven’t.

When baby #2 was on the way and we moved to a bigger house, the chair found its place in the new baby’s room. Again I sat in the chair night after night. My daughter always preferred to fall asleep on my shoulder rather than being cradled like the first, but I would still sit there much longer than I needed to, in this chair, savoring her.

When we moved yet again, the chair stayed in my daughter’s room; it really was a nice size for a child’s room. At some point, the chair cover came off, and I had to admit the chair was gross. I decided to wash the cushion cover. I hung it to dry, but somehow it shrunk.  

Now, the material will not fit back over the cushion. I tried; my husband tried. It will not fit!

So for a couple of months now, the chair has sat in this unusable situation, in our guest room, without my permission to be thrown away because I started thinking about how much this chair and I have experienced together.

The other day I mentioned to my husband that I was thinking about storing the chair until I had some extra money to get it re-upholstered. He laughed hysterically. I had to laugh, too, at the ridiculousness of storing and very likely spending several times more than it cost me in the first place to re-upholster a nearly 17-year-old mini chair.

People spend a lot of money on furniture, and on baby gliders and rockers. There was a time I wished I could have, and truthfully, I almost did buy a “better” chair to rock my babies. However, I know now that no amount of money could have purchased a better chair for me to spend those precious moments in. 

Although part of me is still searching for a solution to “save the chair,” finally, tonight, I am moving towards separation. Deep down, I know my memories aren’t tied to stuff, and if I can have these strong memories tied to an itty bitty, gross, 17-year-old chair, it’s definitely not the stuff that matters. 

The chair in its heyday, with my first child.