My Life in Chairs

“Don’t even go there!” my back admonishes me.  

It must have seen me eyeing my cozy nestle chair by the garden doors, novel in hand, and is having none of it.  Better heed its warning.  Looks like a chair isn’t an option for me just yet.  The price to pay in back agony and leg pain is just too high.  More yoga, more stretches, more massage, more exercise.  Then, maybe?  Until that moment, the floor awaits. How ironic, that my life, traced in an astonishing variety of chairs, is now defined by a lack of one. 
 Cushioned against the couch on the floor, a bolster under my knees, cup of tea in hand, I am engrossed in a slide show of the chairs that have defined my life. 

 

My first official chair, a kitchen stool with a seat and back in soft grey and white swirls and retractable steps, found its higher purpose as a high chair.  My father added a tray, and, later, a hook, so that I couldn’t push it over my head and dump the contents, either by accident or on purpose.   Next came the wooden toddler chairs with matching table, a gift from parents on my first birthday.   My paternal grandparents added a matching rocking chair,  the blue cat decal scratched and faded with the years, an ID label under the seat in my mother’s characteristic hand. Now, my grandsons rock out in it when they visit.

 

The chairs of my youth were developmental chairs.  On the grey kitchen chairs, I learned to play cribbage.  On the desk chair in my Grade 5 classroom, I heard that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Glued to the den desk chair with the fluorescent green seat and dark brown half-back at age twelve, I taught myself to type using the QWERTY keyboard on a small blue typewriter my father obtained as a premium from an encyclopedia purchase.  On the fluorescent blue wooden chair in my room, I puzzled through algebra and trigonometry, and recited French verbs conjugations.  On the piano bench, I practiced scales and pieces and prepared for exams, building a skill whose impact on my life I could never have imagined when I was thirteen.

 

The adult chairs marked milestones.  The blue swivel rocker and the Bentwood rocker where I nursed my babies; the blue vinyl kitchen chairs where the children did crafts and my parents played bridge; the formal dining room chairs around a long, oval cherry table, witness to three generations of birthdays, anniversaries, holiday gatherings, graduations, and, yes, bereavements. 

 

For challenge and growth, the professional chairs led the way.  The black swivel business chair of my home office took care of the hidden, ubiquitous work of teaching,  the  late-night lesson preparation and feedback on student work.  Its twin in various classrooms and offices throughout the decades handled the conferences, the record keeping, and lots of planning.   From the professional chairs, the chairpersons  of meetings and professional development sessions over the years,  I learned the art of facilitation:  how to interact with participants, create a buzz in a room, effect smooth transitions from one activity to another, involve participants in active learning and conversation irrespective of the number of attendees.  The relative skill of chairpersons allowed me to maximize my tool kit, or conversely, imagine what could be done differently.

 

Mrs. Macquarie's Chair in a torrential
downpour, Sydney, AU Jan 2020

Ah, memories from the vacation chairs:  the deck chairs on cruise ships where I read and made new friends; two prized resort beach chairs scavenged from a wasteland of lounge chairs bereft of people but boasting a towel as the mark of proprietorship; an oversized bright pink easy chair on the streets of Mesa, Arizona, begging for a photo op; the giant Adirondack chairs on the crest of the Cypress Hills inviting visitors to stop, take a break, bask in the breathtaking barrenness; Mrs. Macquarie's

chair carved into the peninsula in Sydney Harbour, risky in a torrential downpour.

 

Those vacation chairs belong to a past that’s paradoxically recent yet distant, real but tinged with mirage.  Now, we think of COVID chairs, physically distanced,  two metres apart.

 

Lost in contemplation, my thoughts turn dark, to the chairs that might lurk in my future.    The walker/chair (rollator) or wheelchair or geri-chair.  Yikes!  These I hope to avoid.  Right now,  I count on progress to a dining room chair or even my desk chair.  No rush.  Better to heal well than risk further injury.  After all, that’s why, having heard my back loud and clear, I’m on the floor.

 

 

 

First shared with a writing group to which I belong on November 18, 2020.  

And yes, I'm off the floor and back in hard chairs, Working toward sofas and nestle chairs.