Sunday, September 21, 2003
Clubbin’ It
(Saturday Afternoon, late, gilded by the sun’s decline)
Ooh, my butt. My butt is in ecstasy. My sacrum is delighted. My flesh rejoices in the feeling, the firmness, the rich meaty odor of new leather. I am sitting, for the first time, in the Nana Chair.
When my grandfather died last year we chose to memorialize him with heirloom furniture, something that would never go out of style and would always provide pure comfort and support. It’s not like those are traits Jerome himself necessarily personified, but when you needed him he was there, and we wanted to accentuate the best of our memories of him. The mission rocker with leather seat and back has never been less than a delight, to the eye and to the tuchus. It’s sitting right across from me now, as if it’s checking out the new kid. (Though we used Joy Challenger money to buy it, it was Jerry’s memory that it was bought to preserve.)
The new kid came to us as our parallel rememberance for Nana, who died earlier this year. To keep her memory with us on a daily basis, we dipped into our share of her estate to get a leather club chair, slung low and generously upholstered, wide arms curved gracefully and stitched on the sides in a pattern echoing the cool contours of the overall design. We searched for many months before we found the right chair, and I can’t find an image on line that comes close to it so you’ll have to use your imagination. It calls to my mind an old Packard with pendulous fenders, the objectification of practical sophistication. A sewn-in back cushion boosts me as I sit, relaxing my spine and improving my posture. The chair fits neatly next to the entertainment cabinet, under the tangka where the final piece of “old us” furniture used to live. The tired old chair that the Nana chair replaces had been left behind at an apartment to which a friend was moving, and we’d taken it despite being its clunky, heavy, ugly and uncomfortable - because we didn’t have anything better and we needed something on which to sit. At that time our decoration also included a couple of “found” couches, some pressboard shelves for the TV and stereo, and a generally unfocused miscellany of themeless, vapid, tired furniture.
Those days are now utterly over. The old chair awaits large item pick-up day, serving out its remaining tenure as a piece of pet furniture in the study. The living room is now profoundly comfortable, with strong mid-century/mission/japonesque sensibilities. As I sit here, the cushions warming up under me, bolstering me, my mojito sweating deliciously in its gracefully curved glass, I must call to mind the best qualities of my grandmother, a woman of extraordinary sophistication and style. Thanks, Nana. You bought us one sweet seat.
