Tag Archives: family story

Chair Memories – The Spit-up Chair

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The Spit-Up Chair

I know. Not an appealing title. But that’s what we called it.

The poem in a previous post brought back memories of a chair I sat in for about six years. Okay, I did get up out of the chair now and then, but some days I felt like I never left that chair. It was the chair where I nursed and held and rocked and read to my three babies.

I must have looked like this picture much of the time….. tired. On second thought, I look pretty good in this picture. It looks like I had bathed. And had on makeup.

Our first baby spit up a lot. When I shared my worry with the pediatrician, he suggested we keep her upright for thirty minutes after a feeding. Putting her in the infant seat didn’t help, so I would sit in the chair, holding her upright for an additional thirty minutes after she nursed. Sometimes even that didn’t work. It seemed like I was always changing my clothes and wiping down the chair. It went on for months. We chose to sacrifice one chair in order to protect the rest of our furniture. Hence the name.

Sitting in the chair, I daydreamed. I solved the problems of the world. I made business plans that would allow me to stay at home and earn money. I nodded off. I smelled sweet baby smells. I smelled spit up. I felt baby heart beats. I perfected my burping technique. I sang lullabies. I watched TV – sometimes watching history unfold.

Challenger Space Shuttle - Picture courtesy the NASA Johnson Space Center (NASA-JSC)

The most memorable for me was January 28, 1986, when the Challenger Space shuttle broke apart after lift off. All day and all night the footage repeated on the television as I nursed, held, and rocked my two-month-old baby. The coverage was non-stop. Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher to venture into space…. her students and family and friends watching proudly and with great excitement and anticipation. It was a sad day to be sitting in the spit-up chair.

Kids and Grandparents and the Spit-up Chair

We kept the chair for several years after spit-up ceased being a daily occurrence. The chair remained important for rocking, reading, soothing booboos and hurt feelings, singing, watching TV, and posing for pictures.

We no longer have the spit-up chair. But we still have the memories.

Chair Memories – The Gold Recliner

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Woodye and Orville Kessler

Yesterday, I suggested a link to my cousin’s poetry blog at wildamorris.blogspot.com. In case you didn’t visit, I’m going to share from it here. Wilda’s poem below got me to thinking about some chairs in my past. Maybe you will do the same. The cute and happy couple on the left are Wilda’s parents (sitting in chairs!).

 

I am copying here from Wilda’s blog:

A few years ago, I wrote a poem about a particular piece of furniture, the gold-colored recliner in which I rocked many of my grandchildren. When I see it, I often think of my first grandchild, Florence Irene Penrod, who died shortly before her seventh birthday. She was the first child I rocked to sleep in the recliner. So the chair often brings poignant memories of Florrie. Though the poem only mentions two grandchildren, there were several others I rocked to sleep in that same chair, especially Florrie’s younger siblings who spent a lot of days and nights in my home while their sister was in the hospital. This poem—with the chair as prompt—recalls a journey of healing from loss. The sorrow of losing Florrie will remain with me always, but in time, I recalled more of the beautiful memories and learned to smile when I thought of her.

The Gold Recliner

Does this gold recliner remember
how many times Florrie rested
her head on my shoulder,
how she giggled at funny sounds,
how I sang “Don’t Fence Me In”
and “You Are My Sunshine”
as we rocked and fell into slumber.
Does the recliner know
she’d have been twenty
this year had she lived?

Now Lucas climbs between
the recliner’s enfolding arms,
five-year-old hands grasping
this week’s favorite superhero,
curls his tired body
into the golden lap to rest.

Only a couple years ago
Lucas let me hold him
as we read the same books
each afternoon, and finally one day
I could sing “You Are My Sunshine”
to this other grandchild,
after all those years
it had turned to dust in my throat.

~ Wilda Morris

This poem was first published on the website of Highland Park Poetry, http://www.highlandparkpoetry.org/, after winning in the adult non-resident division of their 2011 Poetry Challenge.

 ****    I will be sharing my “chair memories” in upcoming posts. What about you? Is there a chair in your past or present that elicits memories for you? Are you in possession of a chair that belonged to an ancestor? What do you know of the chair’s history?
Please comment about your chair memories! And if you like to write poetry, enter Wilda’s June Poetry Challenge and write a poem inspired by a piece of furniture. 
I look forward to reading your memories!

Grandma’s Butcher Knife – or How I Learned to Behave at the Table

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When I tell people that my Grandmother Eveline set her place at the table with a butcher knife so she could hit you with it if you misbehaved, they get the wrong idea.

It wasn’t like that. Really.

I think it may have had something to do with this guy…
I hear he was a bit of a mischief maker….and then there were his two older brothers…. and maybe his two older sisters weren’t always perfectly behaved either.

And anyway, she wouldn’t have hit you with the blade end. She held the knife by the blade, thus assuming any risk of serious injury herself. The butcher knife was merely an extension of her arm with a heavy wooden “hand” on the end of it, allowing her to deliver a whack on the hand to a deserving miscreant sitting anywhere at the table.

By the time I came to live at Grandma’s house most of the kids were grown, although Uncle Mont (the aforementioned mischief maker) and Aunt Wilma were still in high school. Even so, the butcher knife remained on the table at mealtime. It was enough to make me behave just knowing it was there.