Do you have a Favorite Chair?

 I find myself collecting chairs and tiny benches-that is odd!   When did I start doing that?   Maybe I wish I was little again playing with my dolls.  Think how many chairs you sit in every day...your computer chair, your kitchen nook, your dining room table, your chair at work and the cozy one you crawl into in the evening-to find comfort or escape.  What color is your favorite chair, what type of cloth surrounds you and how did it become yours?

I think the chair I type in now, might be my favorite.  When I sit in this chair, I try to find the light in the corners of my darkness, but my all time favorite chair wasn't comfortable.   Sometimes I was alone in a sea of strangers and other times I sat with friends.  Every time I sat in this chair I would be transported.   The anticipation of what was to come, the music, the roar of the crowd or the loud whispers would all ignite my experience.  As darkness arrived, I would settle in.  Then I would turn and nod to the window of trailing light.  My Dad was behind that tiny window. Sometimes I would stay in the booth and watch him get the film ready.  He would splice worn film-to keep the story in place.  It is a real art form, to replace frames.  Huge canisters of film contained magic and the arc of the projector's light-the spark to illuminate the darkness.  My Dad was a magician. I can see him sitting on a stool performing.  The re-filtered light all trailing, to a huge blank canvas screen.  No wonder popcorn is my comfort food.  My Dad spliced stars and showed them on the Silver screen.

*Joseph O. Holmes

 At home, his favorite chair was a Lazy Boy recliner. It was his chair and no one better sit in it.  We would joke about it-my brother and I.  We would circle it like musical chairs and impersonate him, "You better get out of my chair, right now-that's my chair."   We would tease him and call him Archie Bunker.  No, he wasn't  anything like Archie, except for the ownership of that chair.  When he died we found snippets of film, in our house. 


So, what is your favorite chair?  Mine-a seat in the movie theater,  a park bench by the shore,  the brown leather love seat in my living room, the tan woven deck chair, and the tarnished green glider, in my childhood home, but right now my favorite is the one I type from, talking to you!  

                                                                                                                                                                            © Ellen Wilson