the Too Small Chair

Kids are perpetually unearthing your distant past, sleepless archaeologists scouring away the occluding soil of the past from each whorl & crevasse of distant memory.

This morning Fuss was contorting in our red swivel chair and I remembered when he was a baby and could lie down full length on the cushion.  I had a flash of a red armchair from my childhood, dilapidated & broken down but perpetual, which my dog Rex slept in his entire life.  I inherited Rex from neighbors who never paid him much attention & let him roam loose to play with the weird kid across the street.  One day they were gone and he was still around and we became inseparable.

Initially the chair was a good fit, he'd curl up nose to tail like a cozy dog pillow atop the cushion. But he was a doberman and had a lot of growing to do.  He never left the chair but conformed himself to its dimensions as he grew, gradually being squeezed upright like a mountain range .  He slept sitting up, butt against one armrest, front legs wedged between the cushion and the other armrest, chin resting atop the backrest.

I flipped the memories back and forth, Fuss in the new chair, Rex in the old.
It's difficult, extracting yourself from childhood furniture.