I recently gave away my chair after it cracked, and I think a little part of me cracked, too.
I remember buying it when I went thrifting for furniture shortly after moving to Seattle and finding a new place. I didn’t own any furniture, nor did I have many belongings with me. I felt weary but excited to have a new empty apartment, even if I was broke because of it. Bekah graciously joined my furniture hunt, and we found the chair amidst oversized sporting goods at the Goodwill in Capitol Hill. We walked past it several times; sat up and down to reaffirm my interest. “That’s a good chair and a heck of a deal,” a gentleman said as he saw me mulling it over. Bekah agreed, and I was convinced. We picked it up and walked it up the hill to my place with other bulky objects hanging from our limbs.
I was so proud to have it: a comfortable seat that I could return to in my apartment; a sturdy chair whose style looked beyond what I could afford. It was one of the first pieces of furniture that I ever owned, and it sparked great joy.
The chair was with me for six years in four different homes. Six years with a loved and thrifted chair is longer than I ever anticipated. It joined a growing collection of furniture items that I assembled over the years, and eventually fell out of place among them, gathering dust after its frame cracked. Its repair exceeded my skill set, and so I passed it on to someone who could give it a new life and home.
I took dozens of photos of the chair in my house before handing it off, as if I could memorialize an era of my adulthood that it witnessed. Watching it leave my possession felt more somber than I expected to feel from a piece of furniture. It was part of the home that I grew for myself over the years—a steady presence by my side (and under my butt) in several places and configurations. Soon, it will be part of someone else’s home. Maybe it will bring them similar pride and joy, or maybe it’ll just be a chair. It really was damn comfortable to sit in.