More chairs

So. Carl and I have for the last… 9… years eaten our meals on $15 fold-down plastic chairs from Ikea. They are still, by the way, in nearly perfect condition. (If not terribly comfortable, although that’s never stopped us.)

Unfortunately, when toddlers try to climb up on them they have a tendency to flip shut, so we have been looking for new chairs. Carl and I have this furniture problem which is that he only likes things we can’t afford and unless I basically force the issue and buy within the budget I’m willing to spend knowing that he doesn’t wholely like whatever (see: $15 chairs, above) we often just… don’t have furniture. I still don’t have a headboard for my bed. And so on.

(Ideally we would haunt auctions and garage sales, but sadly, this is Carl’s version of a nightmare. I’m working on Craigslist.)

So anyways, our chairs are this known issue, especially since, lately if you come to my house all the kitchen chairs are folded up when no one’s sitting on them.

And my parents, as mentioned previously, have been renovating and culling their furniture collection (a good thing).  So they offered us a set of chairs.  The chairs they offered were chairs we pulled out of someone’s garbage (I remember that!) and my dad refinished and had caned and they represent the best of recycling to me, so I said: great! Would we take that as our Xmas gift? Sure.

Two days ago they called and said they were worried about the caning giving way under little feet (which is a good point, although I think a set of chair cushions would cover that no problem).  Okay, actually it went down like this: for three weeks my mother obsessed that the caning was Not! Safe! For! Toddlers! and I just insisted that it was fine.

But two days ago she said “I’d rather give you 5 other* chairs.”  And I, distracted (possibly for dissociative reasons, see below), said, “Okay.”  I mean – they are all their furniture until the point of giving them right? And anyway, no further excuses, I just said “okay!”

Yesterday they arrived with the chairs. Very lovely carved wooden sturdy dining room chairs.

From my grandfather’s house and upholstered in the reverse fabric from the sodomy chair.** (That is orange with brown flecks; these are brown with orange flecks.)

To be fair I should have figured out in advance which chairs they were talking about. I really should have.

I decided not to pitch drama on Christmas Eve, as much for my own peace of mind as anyone else’s.  But very soon they will be going back. With a polite but full explanation like: “Thank you for the very lovely gift, but since getting it I’ve had flashbacks of abuse and obsessively worried about Noah, so I think I will return them to you.” (Carl favours burning them, but I think this is better.)

But it’s the caning that was dangerous. Gavin De Becker says in Protecting the Gift that when parents obsessively worry about one danger they often miss another.  I think this kind of explains a lot of my mother’s behaviour, except with a slightly darker spin on it. She has to continually keep things like this in my face because it allows her to subconsciously be off the hook that the abuse had any lingering effects or anything like that.

And yes, it’s so tempting to confront her with it (and I think I quietly will, as framed above).  But the thing is that my mother is getting old, and she hasn’t changed yet.  I wish in my child-heart concerned with fairness that she would Pay! Pay! Pay! for her insensitivity and other things.  But in my adult mind I have chosen to try instead to accept her up to the point that it actively hurts me.

Of course this is one of those lines. Sigh.

* I could have figured out which ones she meant, probably, but you have to understand that my parents have more furniture than house – enough that at times some rooms have felt like rabbit warrens – so picking out which set of chairs is not as simple as it might be in some homes. Also they have an attic, two garages, and a storage room in their basement from which furniture is occasionally unearthed. Still, yes, should have listened  better.

** The sodomy chair is an upholstered chair with matching footstool that my parents inherited from my grandfather. At one point they decided to use this chair and footstool in their living room. With the support of my therapist I decided to draw the line at that time and I said of course it was their decision but I would not be coming into their house while that chair was there. I had to hold that boundary for 1.5 years – discussed things on their porch, met them for restaurant meals – but they did get rid of it…and kept the footstool, which graces their home to this day.