Chairness

Writer’s Antique Chair

I never knew there was such a word as “chairness,” but there is, and its definition is straightforward: “The essence of what it means to be a chair; the qualities that make a chair what it is.”

Chairs are alive with personalities of their own, so much so that someone could aptly be described as a wing chair, a barcalounger, a folding chair, a director’s chair, a chaise, an Eames, a pew. Chairs receive us; put their arms around us; make us sit up straight or tempt us to lie down; cushion us; discomfort us; soothe us. And even when we’re gone, chairs hold on to our memory.

I think of my grandmother’s chair, the only one she could sit in because with her crippling arthritis, it was the only one she could get out of. She did this by holding on tight to the arms and rocking herself back and forth for momentum. The chair, an upholstered, semi-wing, stayed steady and supported her, as if it knew this was its job, its fate. Today, all refreshed, it sits by my sister’s fireplace, and has earned its retirement, though I wonder if it misses my grandmother and its importance to her.

I think of the scratchy chair with its big square arms at the Peace Hotel in Shanghai in January, 1980. Sitting in that chair, drinking black tea from a pale green thermos adorned with pink roses, I thought about being half a world away from home and yet, the scratchy fabric reminded me of a similar chair in our long-ago living room where I took refuge and read fairy tales when I needed other worlds.

My sister has a chair so powerful it has become a family symbol for sloth, passivity, indifference, torpidity, a chair so seductive, so comfortable, so close to the television that once you fall into it, good luck getting out. It’s called the green chair, and though it’s old and quite worn now, it shows no signs of leaving, no relinquishing of its power.

When I first saw the writer’s antique chair pictured here, I was so smitten, I thought my heart would burst and never dreamed that it could be in my life. When I sit in it, I feel the ghosts of those before me who struggled to put thoughts and feelings into words. Sometimes I just sit in the chair, close my eyes, and let myself be part of something bigger than me.

It’s all in the chairness.