The Chair

This morning my mind drifted to a Thanksgiving-type memory.  Hope you enjoy it.


The Chair

It was old and wooden - brown with a sort of amber highlight running through it.  I'd guess oak, but I was never good at identifying woods.  Its legs tapered down to roughly the size of a quarter at the bottom, where little plastic discs served as feet.  It had arms - that's what really set it apart from the other chairs around the table.  Our dinner table was big - big enough to serve even more than the six in our family.  My sisters would bring boys to dinner, and they'd sit with us...and pay good attention to the man in that chair.  Growing up, I wouldn't sit in it.  If I did, I would feel the breath of God on the back of my neck.  I would feel the weight of a world on my shoulders.  There was something about that chair that told me I wasn't ready.  That seat was taken.  If you saw it in a furniture store, you wouldn't me impressed - just another dining room chair like the rest.  But where it sat in our house, it was a throne - and then it was empty.  I still recall the trepidation with which I first sat in that chair after my father's death.  My heart was heavy.  My stomach sank.  But, as many a prince has followed in the path of his King, I sat there.  I held the hands of my family and I prayed to bless our meal.  Today, I'm unsure if anyone feels the effect of that chair as I once did, but at every holiday it sits there - its emptiness reminding me of the greatness once held within.


Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Yeahcomeon


- Dukes