The Chair

I have this chair that belonged to my grandmother. It’s a terrible almost crushed velvet in emerald green. The arms are well worn and the head rest is covered in years of White Rain hairspray from when she would rock in it while drinking her umpteenth cup of coffee for the day. It was her favorite piece in her living room, and it has now become my favorite piece in my living room.

It was given to me shortly before my grandfather’s passing. As dying people do, he was giving away the less meaningful or not previously claimed items in his possession and gifted me the chair a long with a well loved vanity and two retro end tables. I hadn’t really wanted the chair but he insisted I needed it even though I already had been given my mother’s wooden rocker. I brought the green chair home and sat it up next to one of the end tables in my living room and soon found myself sitting in it frequently. It didn’t take long before I was rocking Robbie in it at nap time. It was comforting. It was almost like having my grandmother there with me, as if she was somehow getting to be with her great granddaughter and I during those precious moments.

Sometime later I moved into my current residence and the chair found itself neglected and covered in unfolded laundry and toys. I had completely forgotten its power and warmth until one evening Josiah was fussy and I was struggling to calm him on the couch. I shoved everything into the floor and took to rocking him. Soon he was softly snoring in my arms. Since that day I have rocked him at almost every bedtime in the chair while telling Zach that we can never get rid of it.

Tonight after putting Josiah to bed, I gathered Robbie up in my lap and rocked her to sleep for the first time in a few years. As she nuzzled her sweet little face into the crook of my arm and drifted off peacefully, I thought of my grandparents and how they couldn’t have known that the chair would make its way into my home and be used to comfort my babies when they purchased it over two decades ago. I thought of my grandmother with her chipped white coffee mugs filled to the brim with microwaved instant Folger’s and a napkin pressed to the bottom of the mug, gently rocking while resting before she would go out to bring the cattle in to milk in the afternoons. I thought of countless hours spent cross legged, computer in my lap, with my phone resting on the arm softly playing music as I typed out stories, read, or studied. I thought of my husband and children and how I want this chair to be significant in their memories when they look back. I thought of how something so ordinary can mean so much, which lead me to share my feelings with you, Dear Reader. If you don’t already, I hope that some day you find an everyday item that has great sentimental value and you reflect on the emotions and memories tied to it.