The Lonely Chair
By
Gean Penny
Grandma has a lonely chair.
It has a patch here; it has a patch there.
Every time I go to stay,
Mama offers to haul it away.
“Definitely not! No, oh no!
That patched up chair must never go!”
Mama smiles sadly and shakes her head,
“You should at least move it to the shed.”
Grandma just winks at me and smiles,
“I think I’ll leave it right here for a while.”
Grandma knows I love that chair, too,
so moving it out would never do.
Hours and hours, after Mom leaves,
We sit in that chair and read, and read.
And when we’ve finished many a book,
Grandma sighs and starts to look.
“That patch there,” she begins to say,
“reminds me of a special day.
Your Grandpa brought me some wild flowers
after working for hours and hours
on that old dented and beat up car,
and his pocketed screwdriver left a star
shaped hole right there beneath that patch.
And my! What devil he did catch
from me when I heard him yell
a bad word after sitting down a spell.”
“What word, Grandma?” I would prod,
But she would only smile and nod.
“And that patch, the one you’re sitting on,
Came from the hoof of that orphaned fawn
your granddaddy treated like a baby.
But then, he got a little too big maybe.
And that one over on the side
came when he took this chair for a ride.
We were goin’ to sister’s to visit,
and he wanted a comfy place to sit.
But this old chair slipped off the car,
and then the hole, so there you are.”
Patch after patch brought tale after tale,
one of a pen, one of a nail,
one of a snag, one of a glass,
until she’d come to the very last
patch, a heart shaped one, a cross inside,
“I sewed that one on when your granddaddy died.”
And she’d lovingly stroke the tiny heart
and suddenly give a little start.
“And that’s why I can’t let this chair go,
it reminds me of him, his smell just so.”
I took a deep breath, inhaling the scent
that had settled in while Grandpa spent
his days relaxing after hard work,
no task too big or small to shirk.
“Grandma, one day, can I have this chair?”
“You know, I believe that is exactly where
your granddaddy would want this chair to go.
But you know your mother’s gonna say no.”
“Yes, Grandma. And can you teach me how to sew?”
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