Commonplace Quote: A Chair

 

Photo by Kelly Miller on Unsplash

"Remembering is a chair that is hard to sit still in."

Sarah Broom, The Yellow House

"A chair that is hard to sit still in."

I have to think about that concept. 

When is it hard to sit still in a chair? 

When you are waiting for something to happen or someone to arrive. That happened to me last week when longtime friends who live far away but were in town for family matters said they would come over "sometime" that afternoon. Indeed they did come over, but for the last 30 minutes or so before their arrival, as the afternoon wore on, I found it impossible to stay seated for more than a few minutes. Instead I kept prowling by the front window to see if they had arrived yet.

Even reading could not hold me.

When else is it hard to sit still in a chair?

When the chair is uncomfortable. Goldilocks, of course, had this issue: too big, too hard, too whatever. I don't mind a hard chair, provided it has a sturdy back (our kitchen chairs, now in their 21st year of service). I have not had too many experiences with a chair that was physically uncomfortable to sit still in. 

So let me go back to the "remembering"  that starts the quote. 

If I am remembering something good, something warm, something satisfying, I can sink into that memory, let it wrap its arms around me like a comfortable, broken-in chair.

The chairs I can see from the couch in our downstairs study - those kitchen chairs, the green chairs in the living room  - those trigger some warm memories. I bought them all when I was moving out of the house my then-spouse and I had bought 12 years earlier with such high hopes. These chairs were my steps in making a new home for myself and my sons. They served us well then, they continued to serve us well when Ben went off to college and Warren joined our home. They are now in their 3rd home since their initial purchase, and I cannot imagine our house without them.

If I am remembering something that hurt me something that did damage - then the chair of remembering is indeed hard to sit still in. No matter how far I have come from that long ago event, it can still sting or worse. At that point, I am all over the place, wriggling on that chair, until I can let the memory go, take a deep breath, and once again sit easily in the chair. 

I saved that quote in late 2019. I would probably save it again, even when I find it easy to sit in that chair of memory. While typing this out this morning, my mind went back to my grandmother Skatzes and the study chairs she sat in - kitchen or living room - and the joy of sitting beside her. 

That is a chair of remembering I could sit still in for a long, long time.