the golden chair

The kidlet and I don't have a lot of furniture.  We have always had small living spaces, so it's worked out just fine for us.  We have one old ratty small easy chair that due to the color of its upholstery we call the golden chair.  This chair is at least twenty years old and looks every day of that.  This is where the kidlet sits when he watches TV or DVDs.  On the rare occasion that there is something on TV that we both want to watch (like NOVA), we wrestle for the rights to sit in the golden chair.  What usually ends up happening is that I sit down, and the kidlet clambers up onto my lap, and we try to get comfortable.  The kidlet is skinny, all elbows and knees and sharp chin, so this is never easy.  As we shift and rearrange I am struck by how big he is now.  Finally, we settle down into some sort of mutually agreeable arrangement and watch the show.  The kidlet is not very affectionate, he wants to be tickled far more than he wants to be hugged, so I hoarde these uncomfortable moments knowing that soon even this much will be impossible.  I hope that his size will prevent him from it long before his already growing need to see himself as cool keeps him from the attempt.  I was lamenting the fact that the kidlet never tells me he loves me to Scott, and he had a most lovely reply.  "When you're six," he told me, "just about every fiber of your being is filled up with loving your mom.  Saying it is rather superfluous." 

Of course I know this.  I see it especially after he's been at my mom's for a couple of days, and I go up to meet him like I did over Thanksgiving.  The excitement in his face as he runs to the door to greet me, the way that every game must now be played with mom, that grandma and grandpa's attention is no longer wanted, make it obvious.  It's not that I need reassurance, it's more that I feel so keenly how limited our time is, how quickly he is becoming a really big kid.  And I know that when he is older, he won't remember this time now, just as now he doesn't remember being a baby.  Which leaves me in charge of remembering it all: the stains on the fabric of the golden chair, his green glow-in-the-dark dinosaur pajamas, the way, after I tuck him into bed he still insists on ALL the kisses, butterfly, eskimo, fishy, gobbly, and of course, regular, right on the lips, four times.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

*sigh*

The golden chair is golden in so many ways . .

[scott]

"Nothing gold can stay"

[Gary]

That's a lovely post, Nina. As good as Dooce on her best day. Wistful, warm and just plain lovely.

[nina]

Thanks, Gary. It's funny you should mention Dooce, as this post was partly inspired by her last montly letter, especially this, its final paragraph: "But as you clung to my neck the other night I felt it again, an innocence laid bare in both of us, and I realized that without even knowing it we continue to pull each other back to those first few minutes together, just a mother and her child. I understand now that it’s not a matter of forgetting what it felt like, it’s a matter of being reminded of it by living it over and over again."

[Kimberly]

When I was about the kidlet's age, my family had only a small blue love seat in the room with our TV. There were few shows that our whole family watched, but each week when Star Trek came on, all of us (Mom, Dad, my sister and me) piled onto that love seat together to boldy go where no man (or woman, or child) had gone before. I still remember the warmth, and the elbows. You may not be the only one who will remember watching TV together in the golden chair.

[terrilynn]

Such a sweet post. My son is the same age as yours and this Christmas I'm feeling the years flying by so quickly. I think this may the last year that Christmas seems 100 percent magical to him, and I'm trying to soak up every moment of it.