“Did you know about the chair that went to college?”

Dad and I were talking on the phone a few years back about how he filled his days after Mom passed. He spent hours each afternoon going through her poems and prose, much as I do now.

Something he’d seen that day reminded him of that chair.

Uh …what chair, Dad?

Ah, yes. There was a comfy armchair we’d had since, I think, the 1960s in Pittsfield …

… it was forest green, wide-whale corduroy, and great for reading.

Once we established that I remembered the chair, Dad told me the story of sending it to college with my cousin Marie to help make her dorm room more comfortable.

Dad had a vague memory that Mom wrote a poem or short story about it, but hadn’t run across it yet.

Well, if I knew about “the chair that went to college,” I must have forgotten the story. I’ve since kept an eye out while archiving Mom’s work, to no avail.

So I went to the source … or rather the grad.

Here’s what cousin Marie had to say:

I know the chair for sure! It was a beige upholstered chair your parents generously handed down to me for my Yale dorm. My mom sat in it outside Old Campus when we were unloading my stuff from the car freshman year. She marveled how she would never have fathomed when she went down College St. on the bus growing up that she’d be dropping a daughter off at Yale … and taking in the experience from a comfortable living room chair no less! The chair spent the summers in the Ezra Stiles basement. [My brother] Paul once carried it up to my 4th-floor room balancing it upside down on his head chanting “bulldog, bulldog” on the way up.

Ah, yes, the famous Yale mascot. That must be what Marie is cradling in this photo:

And finally, here are Dad and Mom, proud to attend Marie’s graduation in 1995:

If I ever find among Mom’s writing anything that includes “the chair that went to college,” I’ll be sure to come back and add it to this story.

Either way, I’m glad my parents were able to make Marie’s choice for her seat of knowledge all that more comfortable.

Be sure to subscribe, below, and we’ll send you an email notice with each new story (don’t worry – we will never sell or share your email address):