Even with the many fabric scraps I was given to play with, my daddy’s chair is my earliest memory of cloth. I was around 2 years old. It was one of those big overstuffed armchair from the early 1940’s. It had a dark wooden frame at the bottom with curved claw type front feet. The end of the arms were shaped like the feet and I loved to rub my tiny hands over and over them. With delight, I dusted those feet and hand claws with Sandra’s special dusting cloth.
The cloth that covered that wonderful chair was a beautiful blue brocade with a green blending to turquoise swirl. Also traveling around was an intermittent, narrow to wide golden swirl . During the day I would climb up in that chair with a couple of books. As soon as I finished looking through those books I would lay them on the small round table, that belonged to my maternal grandmother and wander my hands over the fabric so I could feel the different layers. Next I would choose one of the wandering swirls of colours and follow it. I never seemed to tire of doing this.
I can vividly remember how large the living and dining area was; where the windows and doors were locate; and how the dining room table and buffet cabinet were positioned at the other end of the room. But for the life of me I have no memory of the other furniture in the room. It is as if daddy’s chair is surrounded by a halo. Maybe because every night I would crawl into his lap while he read me a ‘big” person’s book, meaning that it had chapters. What is interesting to me is that even now I can still smell his pipe tobacco fragrance surrounding us while he read to me.