The Daily Write: Tell us about the special chair (February 15, 2013)

Burnt orange paint, the kind you might use on the house, or perhaps a painting. Hard to say. Wooden. No cushions, rolled arms. But comfortable. Or maybe that's just because I thought of it like patchouli, uniquely my mom.

I rocked next to her sometimes. When my little twin baby brothers were born, I prided myself in holding one in each arm, rocking and singing like the big sister mama I felt myself to be.

Although I left her every year to go back to my dad's, the chair, like her smell, symbolically kept me grounded. If there were an icon for my early life, that might be one I'd use. A simple orange rocking chair, from the late 60s, in the color of the time. You'd see another icon for an avocado pit propped up over murky water in a Ball jar, toothpicks keeping it from falling in. I remember the pits, the water, the slime, and the roots, but never do I remember any one of them being planted. Still, it felt so wholesome.

We had sprouts growing on wet dishtowels too. And of course, the ubiquitous peanut butter and honey sandwiches on over thick wheat bread. I really hated the way the honey crystallized the bread until it was almost see through, crunchy and cloying.

We had a slide in the living room of that house, the one with the pits and sprouts and kid-sized wooden tables with awful sandwiches. The slide, like the tables and chairs, was homemade. Nothing fancy, not even painted. But so much fun to go down in the middle of the day. Or at night.

The chair. The slide. The small wooden table and chairs. The pits. The sprouts. The sickeningly sweet sandwiches. The spicy sweet smell of my mom.

Tenuous, the way all good stories are. Because yes, of course there was a villain. Long dark hair, blood shot eyes, a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 or fortified wine. He was dark, big, good looking and mean. My mom said he was an artist and that if I knew him when he wasn't drunk, I'd see. He beat her every night. Or that's what I thought anyway. All those awful noises coming from the bedroom, from behind a locked door. I pleaded with her to come out, to be safe, but she would instead take too long to reply and then tell me everything was okay. Torture.

And yes, the chair. That beautiful icon of my childhood. We left once. Mom packed us into her van, four kids sleeping on the floor in back amidst a pile of pillows and unzipped sleeping bags. And pee from the twins, who still wet their beds at night. We did this often, escaped out the back door, went to a neighbor's house and waited for my mom to pick us up. Then we piled in, drove off into the hot night with crickets and stars, and parked until the morning came. I felt safe then.

You can guess the rest. The chair. Nothing but wooden shards of orange all over the living room. Obliterated.