The Other Chair

Photo Description: Book Cover with the title The Brainiest Insaniest Ultimate Puzzle Book!

One of the first things you would notice about our front room is my chair. It's a beast! It's oxblood red, odd for a vegetarian I know, it sits on four huge cinder blocks, it has a wide seat and even wider arms. It's tall. It's comfortable. It's a bit imposing. It's also clearly, my chair.

Sometimes when we've been on the road for a very long time, I begin to long for 'my chair' in order to get out of 'my chair.' My wheelchair has comfortable seating but after hours and hours in it my body gets tired of the feel of it. If that makes any sense at all. So getting home to my chair is wonderful. Everyone who visits knows that that's my chair - not because I'm selfish but because I can't use any of the many other chairs in our front room.

Ruby and Sadie both love puzzles. All different kinds of puzzles. I love puzzles. All different kinds of puzzles. Joe and I went in search of a puzzle book suitable for kids but with challenging puzzles to work on. We found a perfect one, well, except for the title, which I did not notice, really notice, for a couple of weeks. It is full of the kind of puzzles the kids love.

So, when the visit, as the just did, when we get home from somewhere, instead of turning on the television. They grab the book, one or the other of them, sometimes both of them, and then climb up on to the arm/s of my chair. And we do puzzles. We laugh a lot while doing them. We discuss how hard they are. We agonize over when to give up and go to the solutions at the back.

I love the look on their faces when they find something in a puzzle. We last did one where you had to find what seemed like 15,000 things in a picture that ended with the letter 'O'. Sadie glanced at it, pointed and shouted 'Volcano!' Her face lit up with pride and a sense of achievement. I kept that picture in my mind for a long while after. Ruby, too, gets excited. She looked at one of the differences in two pictures and saw in one that the little boy had lost his head and then found his face on a balloon flying high. "Gruesome!" she announce, "Awesome!" I still laugh about that.

Last time we did puzzles, I was in my wheelchair while Ruby sat on the arm of my other chair and Sadie leaned over the back of the chair. The three of us were concentrating hard because they had to go home in a few minutes. "We can finish it," Ruby announced. They cheered each other on as we searched the puzzle and counted the things we found that began with the letters, "Dr". At one point Sadie, draped over the back of my other chair said, "Dave, you've got the bestest chairs ever."

And I do.

I've got one on wheels.

I've got one on blocks.

They both serve me well.