TREASURE HUNT

This is a perfect time to talk about chairs.

I just spent a week curled up in a chair in front of a big window in a cottage on the Oregon coast, looking out at the Pacific Ocean and working my way through a stack of books. Heaven.

Before I left for vacation, I asked readers to share their stories about favorite chairs. It didn’t matter if they were family heirlooms or Saturday morning garage sale finds – I was interested.

And when I got back to the office, I found a mailbox full of wonderful anecdotes.

Sheila Jacobson shared the story of a favorite rocking chair. Jacobson stained and varnished the chair when she was expecting her first child.

“I didn’t know what I was doing. Consequently it had small bubbles in some places under the varnish, most obvious on the arms,” Jacobson wrote. “I told myself 37 years ago that eventually the bubbles would smooth out from wear, and they have.”

Now the chair rocks Jacobson’s grandchildren.

“When I sit in this chair, I feel at home,” she wrote. “This chair has held children being fed, read to, sung to, cuddled, soothed and calmed to sleep.”

A few years ago Jacobson added a small brass plaque to the underside of the chair engraved with the names of the children who had been rocked in it

“This poor chair has taken a beating over the years, and it doesn’t really match my new furniture,” she wrote. “But it has a place in my heart.”

Mary Kay Eddy wrote to tell me about an antique platform rocker.

“I’m the third generation in our family to have the chair,” Eddy wrote. “The story passed down is that my grandmother sat in the rocker by an ill neighbor’s bedside as she lay dying.”

After the neighbor’s death, the chair was given to Eddy’s grandmother. When Eddy was young, the chair sat in her room, and after she left home, she missed it.

Eddy’s mother promised to send the chair when Eddy had children, and true to her word, delivered it after the birth of her first child.

She has since had the chair restored to its original condition and treasures it.

Kathleen Gibson wrote to tell me about her 83-year-old mother’s rocking chair.

“My mom received an adult-sized wooden rocker as a present when she was a child during the Great Depression,” Gibson wrote. “This chair has accompanied her through all the events of her life, needing very little repair and requiring only one home upholstery change on the seat.

“This rocker stayed close to the radio and the lamp, for listening to news concerning the second world war and reading letters received as a young bride from Dad in the Pacific,” Gibson wrote. “After Dad came home safely, the rocker moved into their first home with them and was there for Dad when he came home in the evening, tired and worn from working hard.”

When Gibson came along, she was rocked in the chair.

“Three weeks ago, I called my mom on the phone and asked her if I could borrow her ‘great’ rocking chair for a few weeks to put in our sunroom, as company was expected and I thought that it would look cool,” Gibson wrote.

Her mother gave permission, and now the chair is with Gibson.

“It looks as good as new and kind of happy in its own way,” Gibson wrote. “I guess some things never really change.”

I’ve got more chair stories, and I’ll include them in next week’s column.