Portrait of a Chair

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You get to see my orange car as a bonus

Today while driving up and down the street I live on, I spotted a broken chair next to someone's mailbox. Typically, chairs do not hang out on our street and especially not broken ones.

The first time I spotted it was on my way to the market. The broken part was carefully placed upon the seat, the legs of the chair are lovely, and without blemish.

While I shopped for cinnamon, all bran cereal and pears, (hoping to find some that at least looked like they would not be mealy and a disappointment), I thought about that chair.

As you can see from the photo, I have included for you viewing pleasure, it is a dining room chair with the back is broken.

I kept thinking about how the back might have been broken.

Was it:

A. Someone too large leaning back? I have some history in this possibility, which is a whole other story, but in fact does give me the scope to imagine that being the case.

B. Some young couple or for that matter some older couple sitting together on the chair and "getting carried away" and leaning back to "crash!"? Mmmm, possibly.

C. Someone vacuuming to hard around the chair legs and knocking it over to disastrous results, I may or may it have some experience with this possibility.

Waiting for a new home

D. Someone, in a fit of rage, throwing the chair and there by achieving this end results? While I have never behaved in this manner, I have viewed, on occasion, action movies with my spouse. (He rates these movies by how many helicopters are blown up. You guessed it, the higher the number the better the rating at least for him.)

Funny. All or none could be true. This lonely chair, sitting on the parkway of a house on my street, really captured my imagination. It looked like it had been a lovely chair from someone's dinning room set. The thought of having one of my dining room chairs broken and having the set "split up" so to speak, made me sad.

We have had so many meals around that dining room table. Meals that have been; awkward, celebratory, bickering, and pure joy. All sitting in those dining room chairs, with the blue petite point covers, together.


The second and third time I passed the chair, I had a lot of driving today (sigh), only served to reenforced my interest. So finally, on my last drive by of the day, I pulled into the drive, the chair's previous home, and took its portrait.

It is a visual reminder for me of how easy it is to "break up a set" and how tenderly we need to repair, love and care for each other, so none are broken and left out by the street.