A Chair Grows in Brooklyn

It's landscaping, Brooklyn style.

As I strolled along Ocean Parkway the other morning, I glanced across the street and noticed what I thought to be an odd species of greenery growing by the benches on the other side. Always curious about the flora and fauna of Brooklyn and other distant planets, I crossed over to take a closer look. Greenery, yes. Of the plant variety, no. It was a chair, tethered with a bike chain to a parkway bench.

Odd. Was someone really so presumptuous and highfalutin in one of those old apartment buildings, someone whose ass was way too sensitive for the splintery public benches? Someone who believed him or herself to be entitled to a private throne on a public way? On the mean streets of Brooklyn, no less, where deadbolt locks are a given and thieves set off car alarms at all hours of the day and night? I know it's just a chair, but no flimsy old bicycle chain was going to stop some thug with an overwhelming desire to unseat someone else, just for the heck of it.

This morning, I walked the same route again, my only motivation an irrepressible curiosity about the survival of the chair. Much to my surprise, there it was again, as green and motionless as the surrounding trees, still staking a permanent claim to the landscape. I wondered again who had put it there. This time, I was more forgiving; I thought not about the chutzpah behind planting a private piece of furniture in a public place, and more about the meaning of it all. Yes, sometimes a chair is just a chair, but I had the distinct feeling this was more than just about taking a load off.

I thought about my grandmother. When I was growing up, she lived in our building on Ocean Parkway, and, in later years, became a fixture by the front entrance, sitting in her folding aluminum beach chair, ostensibly working on her tan. My mother (her daughter) would cringe at the sight, hated the feeling that her comings and goings were being watched. I found it amusing and, somehow, convenient. It was a great way for me to say “hi” to my grandmother without having to exert myself with a visit – which, come to think of it, I rarely did.

If memory serves, Nana and her chair appeared each year as soon as the snow melted, and reappeared on every sunny day until the leaves began, again, to crack and turn brown. On cold days she wore her old fur coat; on warmer days you could see the tissue tucked into the short sleeve of her dress. Always, she had her reflector on her lap, although she was generally too busy greeting everybody to use it. Except for my mother (and probably, as I got older, me), nobody ever seemed to object to Nana and her chair. Some passed by silently, oblivious to the elderly woman half blocking their path. Others stopped to chat, no doubt about absolutely nothing, but Nana would smile her beautiful smile and welcome each visitor as if to her own home. A sun worshiper without a back yard, a lonely widow with nobody to talk to most of the day, the sidewalk in front of our building became her front porch, her link to the world. She carried her fold up chair with her, back and forth, but her spot was sacred; there was no need for a bicycle chain.

Sometimes a chair is just a chair, but for Nana, it was so much more. I am guessing the same is true for the owner of the green chair tethered to the bench on the parkway. With a quick snap of my cell phone camera, I committed the sight to memory. Then, with a wink and a nod, I kept walking.