Recliner Times

Recliners have been a modern American luxury for almost one hundred years. Edward Knabush and Edwin Shoemaker changed the face of domestic comfort and napping in 1928, which influenced the La-Z-Boy Company’s development of the modern concept. Based on reclining dentist chairs from the 1830s and the Morris chair from the Civil War era, Knabush and Shoemaker, now almost forgotten, created the prototype for the beloved definition of comfort. Little did they know that their innovative redesign of the chair would become the centerpiece of almost all living rooms in the modern world. You might be hard-pressed to go into any home on your street and not find at least one recliner. They have become ubiquitous.

When visiting other people's houses, I look to see if and what kind of recliner they have. Does it rock? Swivel? Recline to a point where one's legs are just slightly higher than one's head? Does it have hidden bins and receptacles for phone charging or a built-in mini-fridge? Does it offer vibration and massage options?

Most importantly, as a connoisseur of afternoon naps, will the chair cradle the sitter in such a way that a brief 30-minute nap won't cause a crick in the neck or back? These are important questions. Sometimes, if they are generous hosts, I will ask to take their recliner for a spin. I’ve always been amazed at the nearly infinite combinations available and the incredible luxurious comfort afforded by what is basically just a place to sit that rapidly converts into a place to lie.

We have two recliners, and they have seen better days. We inherited them from my in-laws, and they served both families remarkably well, considering how heavily they have been used. With three active young men, their friends, our friends, family, a menagerie of pets, many family holidays rammed into their floral print fabric, plus many more sick days, snow days, movie nights, and power-outage days, our recliners have given their best to our backs, legs, and posteriors. They have endured, but have taken on much wear and tear over the many years we’ve had them in the family. They have also accumulated visible signs of their age and use.

Dog fur, cat nails, drink spills, stains, and the eventual use-induced strain of the internal mechanisms are all evident now. They’ve gotten easier to sit in, but harder to get out of. This past Thanksgiving, our very pregnant niece said that although Micki’s chair was comfy, she had to have three menfolk help her to resume her upright position and exit the chair. Her unpregnant husband, a big fellow like myself, said he found that my chair slew him to one side when he popped out the footrest and stretched out. He said it was like sitting on the side of a hill. Our late geriatric pug had to stop sitting with Micki because her chair kept trying to eat the poor little chap. A few years ago, we took a page from Pop Bare’s handbook and bought covers for the chairs to protect what remains of their floral print fabric, but the chairs cause the covers to wrinkle, gather, twist, and get irremovably tucked into chair crevices, so that we are forever straightening and adjusting them.

We’ve talked about getting new ones over the years, but life is busy and full of other necessities. It can feel a little extravagant to think about purchasing new recliners when other parts of the house need urgent attention. Also, we both work at least forty-hour weeks; Micki way more than that, sometimes, and we often have equally filled-up weekends, which makes it hard to find time to do more than fantasize about all the things we’d like to do to get the house where we’d like it to be. 

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I remember very well the first time I ever sat in and enjoyed the recliners. We were newly married, visiting the in-laws in South Carolina. Micki’s dad always had chores for us to work on. He liked to get up early to beat the heat. By lunchtime, we would be back indoors, in the cool. He would put professional golf on his massive TV, and we would sit in their matching recliners and promptly doze. More than once, Evan, when he was still quite small, would scootch up there with me and we’d both nap. Those are some of my best and favorite memories.

Life is full of changes, big and small. When we moved to our house, almost sixteen years ago, the recliners came from the SC home of my in-laws to stay with us. Micki’s mom came to stay with us, too. The chairs served the family again in this new capacity in a much bigger and fuller house. When Ma moved to assisted living, she got her own special recliner for her room, and Micki and I started using the den as our main entertainment and relaxing space, and we have been using them to rest, relax, watch movies, entertain, and celebrate holidays ever since. Ma always gets to sit in one when she visits, of course. We always try to be as generous with them as she and my father-in-law were when the recliners lived in their houses. 

As long as they didn’t fall apart, like the ill-fated Blues Brothers police car when we pulled the little knobby thing to flip the feet out, we kept using them. And we’ve tolerated a lot of deterioration over the years. Micki’s chair’s back frequently slides out of the metal support channels, and the locks designed to keep them in place no longer work. The gap between the back and the seat of my chair is so wide that I have had to stuff a towel in there to keep it from devouring me like the alien plant in Little Shop of Horrors.

We’ve spent enough time in these wonky old chairs that our bodies have become accustomed to the twisty, crooked positions we have to adopt to sit in them. A few weeks ago, while suffering the small agonies of a bad cold, I got so uncomfortable in my chair (in which I’d been sitting for hours uncounted), I actually moved to the couch, just to let my back straighten out. When Micki caught my cold, she opted to recover on our much more comfortable bed than spend hours being forced into positions even the Elephant Man couldn’t have managed for days on end. Right before that, when we were being threatened by whole inches of ice by the Sky Gods, she slept in her chair, and I slept on the couch, just to be in a different part of the house in case our big Leaning Oak toppled under the weight. The next day, she was stiff and sore as a result.

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In the last year, we have slowly begun to get the house back up to a standard. It’s not that we live in a dilapidated nightmare house, but that we’re busy people and these things take time. As Pop Bare always says, “you can’t fix everything on day one.” The repairs we’ve made have helped us to feel more comfortable with the house and have also highlighted the areas we still need to manage. As I wrote the other week, we recently had the kids to our house for the weekend, and the freshly painted rooms made it that much more welcoming.

On one of those common adventures that Micki and I find ourselves on, we swung by an ice cream shop for a much-needed midday treat and spotted a sign for a furniture place. She mentioned how nice it would be to replace the old beds that we have in our spare bedrooms with new beds. We store-hopped and eventually found a place that had a frame, a mattress, and box springs that we liked. We discussed it and based on their prices, planned to buy two matching sets, so that when the kids come at Easter, their rooms will be that much more comfy. That’s when fate stepped up behind me and whispered in my ear, “Have a seat in that recliner, over there.”

It's a funny old world. I sat and began fiddling with the sliding compartments for cups, then gave the recline function a whirl. It was like sitting/lying on a cloud. The fabric was smooth, almost like suede. The cushioned seat didn't hurt my tailbone. The fluffy back felt like a dream. Given the time of day, I might have napped right there. I got up, and Micki gave it a sit while I checked out the ‘love seat’ version, which was just two recliners connected by a wide, comfy middle section, like it had been caught in mitosis. She got up, tried the love seat, and played with the bins. I sat back down in the recliner.

As I did, a tiny little girl went by with her mommy and meemaw and gestured a little paw in my direction and asked, “Tanta Bloss”? Admittedly, it had been a few weeks since I'd trimmed the chin fungus, but, sitting there, white (ish) beard and all, the little one inquiring if I was Jolly Old St. Nick I had a premonition.

Two little granddaughters standing by my comfy recliner, a Christmas tree in the background, and me pretending to be Santa. At the center of it all, this recliner in which my keester was plopped. I had no intention of suggesting we enter into a haggle with the salesperson, feeling that was a little too audacious for me.

So, we put our heads together and came out of the store with two new beds, a brace of recliners and a new love seat. Then we went to shop for sheets.

It was later, as we rested from our adventures in spending that I mentioned how our backs might ache in the new chairs, at least until we get used to sitting in non-jacked up chairs. Micki agreed and said how nice it would be to have that problem. Sometimes you just need new furniture. As loath as I usually am to spend money, I'm relieved. These new chairs will have so many memories on them and in them. As always, it is tough to say goodbye to the old stuff. That's just my nature. Still, we were ready for new recliners. And I'm looking forward to getting used to them. We both are.