Mark Smith

My grandfather was a tailor who emigrated from Germany and opened a modest dress shop.  My grandparents never had a lot of money, rented a small apartment and lived frugally. With the little money they did save, my grandfather bought what we have always called: “The Grandfather’s Chair” or, as time passed, simply “The Chair.”

Handmade by a local craftsman, it was one of only two, and my grandfather prized the one he had.  It sat on the most prominent wall in their apartment, and I was never allowed to sit on it.  But when nobody was around, I would touch it, lean on it, nap under it, pet the hard-carved dog heads on each arm, trace my finger around the Arabian soldier sitting atop his horse on the chair back and would get  ascloseasIpossiblycould without actually sitting on it.

After my grandfather died, I slept every other night with my gramma. As the years passed, she moved a few times to small apartments closer to us.  In each, The Chair held court on the best wall in the living room.  And I still was not allowed to sit on it.

After she died, The Chair went to Mom, but it was never quite happy in the corner.  It visited my brother’s home, but soon found itself covered up in a garage. Years later, it trucked cross-country to my sister, but it never quite felt at home with California modern design. And so it trucked back again across country to me, where The Chair has a new seat, sits on a prominent wall and is happy once again.  It is at its happiest when a little two-year-old boy pets the hand-carved dog head and climbs on it to get the toy car he can’t reach sitting on the window seat.