dad's chair

A chair in the middle of the living room.
Caramel brown, worn down, always facing the TV.

This is a memory about growing up in the kind of house that felt loud, imperfect, and completely whole, until one day it wasn’t.

About what stays behind when everything else changes.
And how certain objects quietly hold onto the feeling of a life that used to exist.

hosted by Kathy Patalsky

healthyhappylife.com

IG: KathyPatalsky + notes.kathy

Transcript

Kathy Patalsky 0:01

It was lined with a soft pleather, a caramel brown with a yellow tinge, like melted toffee. It smelled like tobacco and old spice. You're listening to Notes with Kathy Patalsky, Dad's Chair.

Speaker 0:15

When I was a kid, my dad had a chair. It sat in the living room, pointed directly at the TV. The TV was this giant clunky block of a thing lined in dark veneer wood. It had a static y screen and a bunch of silver buttons you had to press to change the channel. If you wanted to move it, you had to use your whole body pushing it across the carpet maybe two inches at a time. That TV was the centerplace of the entire living room, as it usually was in the eighties and nineties, before the era of flat screens on the wall. And my dad's chair stared directly at it. It was lined with a soft pleather, a caramel brown with a yellow tinge, like melted toffee. It smelled like tobacco and old spice. The arms were thick and rounded, sturdy enough for me to climb on, balance, flip backwards, and climb up again. I remember leaning over the edges, doing back walkovers off those arms. Over the years, little torn pieces appeared along the edges, white puffy material poked out from the pleather. The chair wasn't perfect. My dad liked it that way. And when I picture him at the end of the day, if he wasn't at the tennis club with his buddies playing for hours, or still in his office downstairs with the door closed, that's where he was, in his chair. He'd lean back, hit the side lever, and the headrest would tilt back, the footrest would pop up with one of those rusty metal hinges you never wanted to get your fingers near. Sharp and heavy. The nicer version of that chair came later. The lazy boy, pale blue and velvety, stain resistant, soft, something you could vacuum. I remember seeing it over at my friends' houses. But this one, my dad's chair, it was firm and pillowy all at once. On hot days, the pleather would stick to your skin like it was melting into you. Oddly comforting the way it warmed your body. I was held in that chair as a baby. It's where I took my first photo with my sister, her holding me, screaming, crying. It's where I pulled my cat Daisy onto my lap, her white fluffy fur against my pajamas, and I took a picture with her, smiling so big. My mom also had a chair. It was in the other room, in the corner by the window. It had those soft edges, vines and butterflies and flowers all over the pattern. It felt almost Victorian with its wooden legs and firm seat. She'd sit there with her tee and stare out the window, angled just enough so the neighbors couldn't quite see her. I remember being in the driveway playing basketball at night, looking up and seeing her there, this quiet silhouette in the window. And I was like, Mom, I can see you. Everyone can see you. So yeah, she had a chair too. Back then, the family room where my dad's chair sat was where we all went to watch TV be together. I remember watching 902 and oh late at night on that floor. Sometimes we'd eat dinner while watching something on TV. We were just existing in the same space. I remember every day after school, I would get home, lie on that carpeted floor, my feet in a sunbeam. I'd watch Save by the Bell, Growing Pains, The Brady Bunch. And my dad watched two things football, the 49ers, Joe Montana, or tennis. I still remember him watching tennis, leaning forward, completely locked into a match. It was Jimmy Connors, age 40. I think it was the US Open, his big comeback. My dad was pumping his fist, saying, Look at him! He's pumping himself up. Look at him go. He clapped. My dad was in his 50s by then, and he probably saw himself in that. The older guy still competing with the younger ones. And then at some point in grade school, my dad moved out. My parents separated. And the truth is, I don't really know why. It's strange the things you accept as facts when you're a kid. But I do remember this. His chair stayed. He didn't take it with him. Later, when I visited him in one of his apartments, he had a new chair. It was black instead of brown. Puffy, softer. Some might call it nicer, but I didn't like it as much. There was something about the original, that caramel color, the worn pleather, the brass beads lining the edges. It felt like something out of a cowboy movie. And my dad loved cowboys. Every Halloween he dressed like one hat, jeans, one of those string ties with the metal clasp. He'd make my mom dress up too, and a long brown velvet dress straight out of the 70s. He even had this cowboy hat that smelled like a dead cow. And he loved it. And when that chair was still there in our house, but he wasn't, when he lived across town, I'd lie on the floor in that strip of sunlight and just look at it. It felt like a ghost. Like it was holding onto a version of our family. It wasn't there anymore. A time when the TV was too loud on Sundays, the hum of football making my mom cringe. And somehow that noise felt comforting to me. Because we were all in the same house. It was loud, it was messy, like families usually are. But even when we drifted into our separate rooms, we were still all there. Even now, when I picture that house owned by other people, that chair is still there, invisible, like a ghost, caramel brown, smelling like tobacco, sitting in the middle of the room like an old quiet throne. I don't know exactly what happened to it. It was thrown away, donated, forgotten. But I can still see it because it wasn't just a chair. It was a place where I was held as a baby. It represented a place where we all existed together. This imperfect, messy, kind of ridiculous version of family life that somehow it still worked. And when that time ended, the chair stayed just long enough, I think, to remind me as I got older of what used to be there. This was Notes by Kathy Patalsky. This was notes by Kathy Petalski. For more, follow Kathy on Instagram or visit healthy happylife.com.