Memory Monday: Child's Chair

Little Blue Chair

A Child's Chair with a History and Maybe a Future

I won’t say our family members are hoarders, but some of the things we keep are used for generations. My husband was an only child, and his mother saved a number of things from his childhood—his story books, his metal trucks, his small record player with records, his little cowboy boots (which no one after him ever wore), his porcelain potty (not the chair, just the bowl), as well as several other things, including the chair above.

Now my mother didn’t save as much, but then there were four of us girls. I still have my last doll which my daughter played with when she was a little girl (see post about the LAST DOLL), a few books that I got through a Weekly Readers Book Club subscription, and a stuffed Jolly Green doll (well, this last one I finally threw away a couple of years ago because it was literally falling apart, maybe because it was over fifty years old).

I guess I have passed on the saving/hoarding gene to my daughter. It showed up in her at an early age. Once when I told her to clean her room, she hauled a large trash bag into the living room filled with books, toys, and trash. When I asked if it needed to go to the dumpster or put with what we would sell in a garage sale, she let me know it was neither—it was what she was saving for her children. Now you have to understand that at the time she was probably only in the second or third grade, so I figure she had heard me say the same thing “way too many times” about something I was saving for my grandchildren.

But there are some things that have been saved (and used) across the generations. The chair pictured above is one of those things. My husband used it about sixty-five years ago when he was a little boy, only it was a deep rose red then. Years later, our two children (who are both in their thirties now) used it. We have discussed the different colors of the chair lately, but neither one of use can remember when it was repainted blue (there is a layer of white between the red and the blue—how patriotic).

The chair is in use again for the newest generation. Our little two-year-old granddaughter sits on it while she plays in our living room. It is just the right size for her. And as well-built as it is, it should be available for the next generation in about another twenty or twenty-five years (and maybe several more generations after that).