Reflections on the Seventh Week of Winter – Rustic Chair

Aspen Table and Chair

 We fretted over different things.

Holding a pile of four blankets on my lap Friday morning, I bounced on the pickup’s passenger seat and wondered if the special ordered chairs would feel comfortable.

My husband, his elbow on the console, drove with a clenched jaw as if he mulled over how to get the log chairs and end table into our house. An armful of fire logs is heavy, and a chair made of logs is much heavier. Not needing a hernia, Spence had reason to fret.

Wind swirled snowflakes through the frigid air while we rode the thirty-eight miles to Cherry Valley Furniture, an Amish Barn Store  in Andover, Ohio.

Last fall our hunt for easy chairs, made of white pine logs to match our sofa and coffee table, had included three furniture stores. Each had a catalog with one style of log chair. Multiple Google searches ended in astronomical prices. Then Spence spotted Cherry Valley, a furniture store he’d passed when forced to detour on one of his many trips for lead safe volunteering in Cleveland.

In early December, we walked into Cherry Valley, which had a faint wood scent and resembled an immaculate museum. I gawked at chiming clocks, furniture so polished the surfaces looked like mirrors, bags of tempting snacks, Amish sayings on wooden signs, and toys that made me wish I were three again―faceless Amish dolls, a tricycle pulling a wooden wagon, and a metal ditch digger with lever controls.

Ambling through the store, we found log furniture in a back corner. Three easy chairs waited for my fanny. Like Goldilocks, I sat in each one. Too high. Too low. Just right. Though that third chair cradled my body with soft, firm support, its back arched thirty-eight inches wide. A pair of those chairs, with our other furniture, would eliminate all walking space in our twenty by fifteen foot room. Sheesh. I’m too old for crawling over furniture.

Dreading more futile searches, I let my shoulders slump. We might have to buy another pair of Adirondack chairs to replace the ones with wobbling, scratched arms and loose, wooden pins that sort-of kept the chairs from collapsing.

“Try this one.” Spence rested his hand on the back of an aspen rocker. Light colored logs formed every part of the chair except the seat and rockers.

“It’s a rocker,” I said as if he hadn’t noticed. “Rockers trigger my vertigo.”

“Just try it.”

Planting my feet on the floor so that the chair wouldn’t rock, I sat. Ahhhhh. The tilt of the chair let my back relax, and the armrests met my forearms as if the carpenter had used me for a model. I rubbed my hands against the smooth wood. “But it has rockers.”

“Maybe they can make one without rockers.” Spence swiveled his head in search of a sales person. None. “We’ll ask at the front desk.”

At the thirty foot long front desk, we stopped by the sign reading Lovina. Behind the sign a short, slender woman looked up so quickly I thought her stiff white hat would fall off her head. She peered at us through granny glasses, which added a serious quality to her youthful face. In a clear voice, she said, “May I help you?”

How could such a tiny, young woman speak with a volume that could be heard over a dozen roaring creeks?

She followed us through the store and watched me sit in the chair. “We can take the rockers off,” she tipped the chair forward so the back was in an upright position, “but the chair won’t slant back.”

I rocked the chair backward. “I want the back to tilt.”

“My relatives could make the front legs longer than the back.” She reached behind her long bib apron and whipped out a tape measure from the pocket of her dress. Crouching, she measured. “They could make the front legs eighteen inches and the back legs fourteen. Is that okay?”

We special ordered two chairs and an end table with a drawer, all three in natural aspen―as close to white pine as we could get.

The end of January, Lovina left a booming message on our answering machine. “Your furniture is ready for pickup. Come at your convenience and bring your receipt.”

This past Friday, we paid the rest of the bill at the long front desk then Spence drove the truck around the store and backed up the ramp to meet Lovina.

Loaded Truck

When he stepped out of the truck, she said, “Back a little more. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

He inched the truck toward the dock while she waved her hand in a circle. When the tailgate touched the dock, Lovina called, “Stop.”

Then she picked up a sheet of cardboard four times her width and lay it in the truck bed.

Because I didn’t want to risk scratches on our new chairs, I spread a blanket over the cardboard.

Lovina picked a chair up by its arms and strode into the truck bed.

I marveled that her strength matched her powerful voice. “How much does that chair weigh?”

She lay the chair on its side. “I don’t know. But it’s not heavy.” She walked back for the second chair. “We’ll need to put a blanket between the chairs so they don’t bump against each other on the drive.”

Pulling my great-grandmother’s nine patch quilt from the pile, I tossed it over the first chair. Lovina nestled the blanket between the chairs and returned for the end table.

“I don’t suppose you’d come home with us and unload the furniture,” Spence said while Lovina set the end table on the truck bed.

Her laughter rang like wind chimes clanging in a storm, and her cheeks turned a shade of rosy pink. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”

I squeezed the other two blankets in my arms. “Shouldn’t we put blankets over the furniture for the ride home?”

Spence reached under the furniture for his bungee cords. “We don’t need them. The furniture is wrapped in plastic.”

After securing the load with bungee cords, he drove away from the dock, down the driveway, and headed home.

Leaving the furniture in the truck, we prepared the room.

Our cat Emma didn’t help. While Spence and I moved my Adirondack chair to the basement and the old end table to the porch, she napped in the Adirondack chair she and our son Charlie shared. I slid the chair down the hall with her in it.

She raised her head, flicked back her ears, and dug her claws into the cushion. The chair kept sliding. Merrah! Merrah! Ducking under the armrest, Emma jumped to the floor and scampered into the bedroom.

Spence folded her chair and carried it to the basement.

I swept the floor, wiped it with a damp cloth, and grabbed my camera. “Ready.”

Leaving Emma to sulk, we walked out to the truck. Without Lovina guiding him, Spence backed, got out of the truck to see where landscape lumber marked the path to the deck ramp, got back in the truck, and backed another two feet. He jumped from the truck again, looked at the back wheels straddling the lumber, and laughed a third of Lovina’s volume. “The truck’s wider than my tractor.”

Moving Chair

After unfastening the bungee cord supports, Spence lifted the end table out of the truck bed and trudged up the ramp. “Don’t try to lift the chairs,” he called over his shoulder. “You’ll break your poof-a-loo,” his grandmother’s word for an unspecified internal organ.

I took photos and carried the blankets.

Spence returned, grabbed the first chair by the arms, lifted it two inches, and set it down. He frowned. Reaching around, he held the back of the seat and hugged the chair to his chest. With a grim face, he slow-stepped up the ramp.

Scowling, but not panting, he lugged the second chair up the ramp and into the house.

His fret had finished―time to belay mine.

First, I unwrapped the plastic wrap and stood by the sliding glass door to admire the shiny furniture. The light aspen logs blended with the white pine of the sofa and coffee table. The new furniture enhanced the rustic ambience of our home. Would it be comfortable?

Though wobbly and scratched, the old Adirondack chair had cushioned me for years. From it, I’d gazed out the sliding glass door at visiting animals and passing seasons. And in that chair I’d written two hundred twenty-nine blog posts. Could the new chair nurture me for another two hundred twenty-nine?

I sat.

With less of a tilt to the back and longer legs, the aspen chair gave me a higher seat and a better view. My feet rested easily on the floor, and my elbows relaxed on the armrests giving me a yoga posture comfortable enough for meditation. Okay!

Reaching over to the coffee table, I picked up my computer and settled it on my lap. Because my knees no longer angled higher than my fanny, the computer slid toward the floor. I grabbed the computer, put a pillow on my knees, and made a mental note to buy a triangular pillow on the next trip to town.

Next I opened a document file, put the mouse on the armrest, and typed.

The mouse slid down the armrest and moved the cursor through different paragraphs. Sheesh. A mouse pad wouldn’t fit on the narrow armrest so I placed the mouse on the keyboard touchpad that I’d turned off because it moved the cursor if I’d brushed against it while typing.

Computer balanced and mouse stationary, I wrote. Forty-five minutes later, my fanny numbed from pressing into the wooden seat. I grabbed another pillow, placed it on the seat, and sat again.

Comfort fret done.

Emma padded back into the great room, stopped in front of the chair replacing the one she’d involuntarily ridden, and glared.

“Jump, Emma,” I said to encourage her.

She swished her tail and merrowed.

“You can do it, girl.”

Sitting on her butt, Emma merrowed.

“Let me help you.” I lifted her into the aspen chair.

After circling so she faced forward, Emma sat up as straight as the wood stove poker. She turned her head right then left and merrowed. Inch by inch she eased her body down, crossed her front legs, but didn’t take a nap.

Afternoon turned to twilight, and Emma jumped off the new chair. Turning her head to study the strange intruder, she spit out a merrah as loud as Lovina’s laugh. She marched across the room, wiggled her butt, and jumped onto the sofa.

In time, cranky Emma will belay her fret over the rustic intruder, jump onto its seat on her own power, and nap encircled by its polished aspen arms. Until she does—days, weeks, or years from now—I’ve got blog posts to write in my own rustic chair.

Emma in Rustic Chair