Watching and escaping the world from a favorite chair

The Boston Globe

BEVERLY BECKHAM

The chair was Judy Taylor’s idea. She has one in her bedroom, a big, comfortable chair. It’s where every day she sits for a little while and reads.

We were with our husbands on a cruise ship, on vacation. Remember vacations? Lying around reading something compelling? We were both reading “The Couple Next Door,” sipping some sugary drink and thinking about nothing except how great the sun felt and what we were going to eat next. This is exactly what Judy and I were doing — reading and drinking and talking — when the conversation turned to her “reading chair” and how much she loved it. “You need to get one,” she told me.

When I got home, I thought about her advice but I didn’t take it. I continued to read wherever I was. At the kitchen table. In the living room. Tucked away in the corner of the family room couch. I was fine reading wherever I landed. I didn’t need a special space.

But then my daughter decided to redo her living room and she had a sage green chair and ottoman she no longer wanted. “This is perfect for your bedroom,” she said. I wasn’t sure. My bedroom is all windows and open space. The chair was big and imposing. My son-in-law brought it over and carried it upstairs. My husband liked it. But I looked at it and still wasn’t sure.

And then came the pandemic.

Before it, I hardly sat in that chair. But now it’s where I go not just to read, but to think, to listen to music, to watch old movie clips on YouTube, to look out at the world. And to escape the world.

Last March and April and May when we were all shut inside and staying home and staying apart, when this altered way of life still felt temporary, I sat in the sage green chair and watched the skinny limbs of trees grow fat with buds, which birthed a green-gold lace, which then became leaves that were thin and pale and translucent, which then became leaves that were so deep a green and so abundant that they transformed my ordinary backyard into a sanctuary. I could no longer see the houses behind me or the house beside me. I could see nothing but grass and trees and sky.

With all that was missing from life, there was this. And for many days this was enough, the beauty I witnessed from my chair.

And then came summer and with it the freedom of being with friends outside, of sharing meals on the deck, at separate tables, yes, but that was OK, and the sage green chair wasn’t exactly ignored — when I hurt my back, it was revered — but sometimes I missed a day or two of sitting and observing.

Come October and we were still outside, space heaters on, wearing layers, still social distancing.

And then came November. I sat in the green chair and watched the leaves fall. They drifted. They danced. Their falling was beautiful. Spectacular. But after? With the trees bare? With the backyard exposed?

I saw the neighbors’ houses. I saw the rust of dead leaves. I saw the long, dark days ahead.

Now it is February and I suppose, if I looked hard enough, I could find beauty outside my window. But I’m tired of looking for silver linings. I want to open my eyes and not have to look. I just want to see.

And so I have festooned my bedroom with things that make me happy. Pussy willows in a vase. Sea glass in jars. A photo of an inn in Maine. (A photo of Bobby Orr scoring the winning goal in the 1970 Stanley Cup series because it’s my husband’s bedroom, too.) A painting of my Aunt Lorraine’s. A painting of flowers I bought in Carmel. A pillow my friend Maureen had made showcasing pictures of flowers I grew in my garden last summer.

Now when I sit in my chair and look around, I don’t focus on the gray winter sky or the mounds of dirty snow. I think about the artist who sold me her work at a deep discount because she knew how much I loved it. I think about all the places my sea glass is from. I think about the inn in Maine where my family and I had our happiest times. I think about my Aunt Lorraine. I think about flowers and summer and soft air and warm earth and all the simple things that have sustained me, and that continue to sustain me whenever I remember them.