The High Chair

     This high white child's chair used to gleam a lot whiter. And the tiny decoupaged Beatrix Potter motifs were once whole and intact. But years of use by grandchildren, nieces, nephews and neighbors has taken its toll and despite a renovation with new enamel paint several years ago, all those little hands and fingers have left a legacy of loving attention. I found the chair nearly two decades ago in an antique shop and was smitten with it immediately because it reminded me of an illustration in James Whitcomb Riley's Child-Rhymes with Hoosier Pictures (a book that originally belonged to my mother as a child and that thoroughly intrigued me as a child). Anyway the chair was relegated to the basement laundry room last year because everyone had outgrown it. Rissy spied it during the holidays and begged to have it returned to the dining room, initially I suspect, for a nostalgic bit of use for herself, but finding her long legs now a very ill fit she decided to employ it for her doll.

     As soon as dinner was over and the chair pulled away from the table, little Miss Molly, never one to let a room configuration change, however slight, go uninvestigated, perched herself comfortably in the seat. Several times over the next few days, I would find the chair appropriated thus and I firmly believe that Miss Molly has claimed it for her own!