Her room is a delicate girl-y room filled with ribbons and bows and lace and sparkles.
Her walls painted colors with names like Tinkerbell and Ballerina.
Gauzy sheer white curtains embroidered with pink flowers and sequins frame the window over her white wrought iron bed, the bed that I laid my own head on as a child and dreamed of Prince Charming, Writing and Shooting Stars.
Fancy Nancy, Olivia, Franny K Stein and Sesame Street fill her white bookshelf,
You walk in her room and you know that a little girl lives there, tap shoes and cleats, Mary Janes and cowboy boots mingle on her closet floor while up above there are skirts and frilly sun dresses and t-shirts and shorts. A little girl lives here; a little girl who loves nail polish and bows and boots and soccer and kickball and ballet all with the equal passion that only the young to whom all things are still possible possess.
However, there’s one item in her room that will give you pause.
As you walk in her delicate, pink and green, cotton candy room; you’re confronted with a brown recliner. An old chair with wood arms and a brown fawn suede seat. It juts out of one corner, knocking the delicate balance of her room slightly out of whack.
It detracts from the inherent girlness and youth of her room with its strong lines and utter masculinity.
However, this chair has a story, a reason, a purpose and once you know it, it fits into her room and your heart and you know it could be nowhere else.
This chair was her great grandfather’s chair, her father and uncles fought over who got to sit in it and who would eventually own it when PaPa (paw paw) upgraded. Nathan got the chair.
It’s moved around our house since Princess was a baby, I didn’t want the chair, it didn’t fit into my vision of our home. However, once I brought Princess home from the hospital, it was to this chair that I migrated to nurse her, rock her to sleep and feel her moist hot breath against my skin and the fluttering of her tiny heartbeat. It was in this chair that I sat for hours on end and watched in fascination as her eyelashes twitched against her plump rosy cheeks and her rosebud mouth moved with her dreams.
This chair has moved with us from house to house and city to city.
PaPa passed away last year.
Princess was his only great granddaughter and the pink lady apple of his eye in a family full of rambunctious boys her big blue eyes, bow mouth and freckles delighted him and stole his heart in the way that only little girls can.
So now, this chair sits boldly in her room and as she cuddles into it to read her books, draw her pictures and write her dreams in her journal; I see her once again, a small girl nestled in her PaPa’s big strong arms, she looking up at him with wide innocent eyes and he looking down at her with wonder and love and awe.
And my heart knows that although you may come to our house and wonder at the imperfection and wrongness of that chair in her room; my heart knows that chair was meant for that room.
