The Red Chair

The Red Chair, Remembering Tom (21st in a 30 piece series)

There is a red chair in my kitchen that my dad used to sit in and watch me cook and do the things moms do in the kitchen; cook, clean, take care of kids, manage the house and life, talk on the phone, text, add events to the calendar on the pantry door, make a meal, do the dishes and then start another meal. 

He would tell me how much he loved me, how beautiful I am, what a wonderful mother I am, how amazing I am.  He would step out for a smoke and come back in and sit.  Sometimes he would chat, but mostly he would watch.

I have been listening to and reading David Whyte, a wonderful English/Irish poet.  He says that people we love hold a foundation for us.  And we don’t quite know what it is until they are gone; until the foundation they held for us is no longer there.  And we fall into the space that the foundation once was, sometimes for a long time until we discover what it is.

This is a poem about the red chair, my dad, and the discovery of the foundation he held for me.  And also, how I am finding my way to a landing and to that foundation within myself.

The Red Chair

The Red Chair
In my kitchen
You sit
Gazing
Admiration beaming from your eyes
Love streaming on your words
Full presence extending from your being

You are here now
You know, the past
You feel, the future
You are here
Now

I move
I am quick, in the next moment
And the next 
And the next
A life full
A full life
Filing moments
Absent of time to stop and sit
To find this moment
Finding you

I do what I do
Every so often, a glimpse of you
I hear your words 
I shrug them off
Cooking and care-taking
Mothering 
You Watch

When you are gone
The words disappear
The gaze is not here
The Red Chair that held you
My memory
My love for you

The poet says
There is a place
Held by the ones we love
A place we fall into when they fall away
Tumbling, turning
Searching, yearning
For a long, long time
When they fall away

This home of love
This earth of existence
That is laid by the other
That is lost in loss
Can only be found
When it falls away
When you fall away from it
When you fall into you
Falling in love
And caught
On a landing of loving