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My friend Seena - who lives in Manhattan - and I, got to talking about chairs. She sent me a photo of her new animal-skin acquisition. I sent her a picture of my velvet purple chair, gifted to me by an old boyfriend back in the day when I actually used the word “boyfriend” to describe a beau.
The word “boyfriend” has now become almost obsolete, though still in vogue by some, but the chair remains, a remnant of another time - and is the one which Seena describes as “very kitsch.” We refer to it as “The Boyfriend Chair” –- from a lovely guy, who eventually went his way while I went mine. The chair and I however formed a permanent relationship.
Fact is, my purple chair is exquisite, and so delicate that I never even sit in it. It stands off to the side of my living room, looking like a piece of art deco to admire, but not to utilize in any real way.
Once, my handyman, Wilson, came over and plopped himself down in it. I intended to say, “sorry, off limits” but I didn’t want to be rude. So, I kept my composure, hoping it wouldn’t break. It survived Wilson’s muscular physique, making me realize the chair is sturdier than I thought. Yet, I still shy away from making human contact with it.
It does not surprise me that Seena has an animal-skin chair. If anyone would, Seena is that person. She is fabulously funky and wonderful, original and fun. Such a chair fits right in with her persona. It is the perfect piece of furniture for a woman who would derive much pleasure from such a conversation piece.
As the subject escalated, she and I got serious, which we often do between the banter and the giggles, a chair, we decided, is an important accoutrement, and must be treated thusly. Over time, it even becomes a treasured member of the family.
I recall with vivid and tender nostalgia my dad, Benjamin Katz’s favorite chair, well-worn through the years with the imprint of his body sculpted into the cushions. When he wasn’t around, our dog – “The Lady of the Manor” - surveyed the landscape, and considering the coast clear, nonchalantly entered dad’s domain and curled up in his chair. There she snoozed away the afternoon until she heard tires crunching up the gravel, alerting the hound that dad was home, and it was time to relinquish her cushy post.
Other times when my father caught her sleeping in his chair, one loud throat-clearing “harumph” coupled with a menacing glance, would send her skulking off to her own canine quarters. This chair was my father’s sacred spot, and neither human nor beast was allowed to invade his territory. The dog was, in fact, indignant, and carried on by sneaking in naps whenever possible. This familial game lasted for the duration of my childhood, the pooch usually winning out, and I secretly applauding her perseverance.
Through the years the chair’s cushions became frayed. The color faded from a deep charcoal gray to salt and pepper, like my dad’s own hair, which had grayed throughout the aging process. When he died, the chair remained a shrine to his legacy until my mother finally, after the bereavement period was over, sent it off to a rummage sale. This was an act so brazen from which the dog and I never quite recovered. But as she explained, “it was what your father would have wanted.” The beast and I did not believe this to be true.
My dad, a respected New Jersey attorney, had in fact two chairs that defined his persona. There was the aforementioned comfy lounging one, and his other, which I called his “lawyerly chair.” It was constructed of a deep mahogany wood with dark green leather, and when he sat in it, his entire body language changed and he became all business. That chair was where I loved to swivel, swirling myself around as if I owned the world and could settle all problems. It was also the chair where my dad and I had serious talks on all sorts of subjects – the chair in which he sat when I was being scolded for some now obscure mischief-making antic, the one where my “boyfriend” problems were solved, and my future plans were discussed.
The chair defined my dad at his most serious. But the other, which he and the dog shared, depicted another side of his personality: the one of a man who kicked off his shoes, and invited me to watch the Friday night fights. It was the chair in which he drank a glass of scotch, read books, and stared out the window at neighborhood passers-by. It was where he removed my splinters from walking barefoot around the house, and where he helped to soothe my adolescent angst. I came to love that chair because it represented my dad as I like to remember him best - all warm and welcoming - beneath a throw blanket my mother placed over him when he fell asleep to snores that resounded throughout the house.
Time has traveled, and it’s been a long while since I have returned to Passaic. It was the town of my childhood, and though that childhood is long past, it is still where my memories shine brightly.
My home now is Westport, Connecticut. And it feels like home, as Passaic did back then when I attended Passaic Collegiate School, and where I saw my first movie at the Montauk Theater. It was the town of The Ritz restaurant with the flat-footed waiter in his black shoes and his prickly demeanor. Passaic was visits to my grandparents’ the Tobins’ spacious home on President Street with its wrap-around porch and blue hydrangeas flanking the walkway. And my paternal grandparents’ house on Columbia Avenue, which always smelled of moth balls, cookie dough and lavender, and housed a vegetable garden with plump tomatoes, and wild blueberries and strawberries.
Passaic was first Bickford’s, near Simbol’s Shoe Store, with the fluoroscope machine where kids could survey their bony feet, until such atrocities were deemed verboten. We then moved on to the Howe Cafeteria, where dad I had breakfasts after his Saturday morning handball games, about which I wrote this poem:
Handball
On Saturday mornings
my dad brought me to Passaic Park
to watch him and Boogie Brill play handball.
While the small hard black rubber bullet
Smacked against the backboard,
Perspiration dripping off dad’s undershirt,
I sat on the bleachers reading Archie comics,
soaking in the scents of my father,
Whose one-gloved hand
rose high in the air
smooth, deft, determined,
like the man himself, never missing a shot.
While I watched Betty and Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, and
Archie navigate through their own adolescent angst,
I would occasionally glance up
hearing Dad shout: “I’ve got it.”
Later, we went for pancakes,
at the Howe Cafeteria
Dad, all shiny and sweaty,
pouring maple syrup over my stack,
a stream of steam rising from his coffee cup,
hazy and hot like those early summer mornings filled with no tomorrows.
Now, here in 2022 with Valentine’s Day soon approaching, I wax nostalgic. It is a time of love and friendship, and I think of dad, and my dear friend Seena, whose own life is filled with memories.
And so, Seena and I got around to talking about chairs, and together, she and I have decided that chairs matter - these inanimate objects, which have followed us through the years, and have become significant appendages to our lives.
Seena’s husband recently died after a long illness. Her grief was palpable, but as is characteristic of Seena, she has gathered a treasure trove of memories and moved on. Hence, the new chair, which has become her Manhattan apartment’s au courant fashion statement- just as Seena herself is a fashionista of the highest order – a woman of great taste and elan.
“About your purple chair,” she said one day. “I think it would look perfect in my apartment. I’d be happy to purchase it.”
“Not for sale,” I told her, “But if it ever is, I’ll be happy to gift it you.”
Now, after her return from two weeks in Paris, we are back to chair-talk, once again, and Seena has summed it up perfectly: “We can be the chair people,” she amusingly noted one day. “A chair grabs you, then envelops you, and eventually it owns you.”
Today, chairs inspire my own literary ramblings. Each of us requires a chair which best defines our own unique personalities. But, at best, a favorite chair is there to relax us – to nurture us - to provide a place of solace where we can kick back and simply put life on hold for a while, as my father did, as did my dog, as does my friend Seena, and as I like to do when we get caught up in the fullness of life, and we need a place to crash, and recharge our batteries.
So it was with my dad, as it is now with Seena and I, that chairs figure heavily in our life stories. And though I won’t part with the purple chair, I write this memoir, both for my dad, and for Seena: for the laughs, the tears, the immeasurable moments, and with the hope of many more such acquisitions in our respective futures.
May our chairs, and our friendship, live happily ever after.
Judith Marks-White, JHSNJ
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