Last year, Maria and I were taking our garbage to the town dump, and we saw this tattered beauty of a chair in a pile, headed for the crusher. We couldn’t quite bear to see it destroyed, so we shocked the dump staff by removing it from the garbage pile and putting it into our car.

We brought it home and put it in the barn. I think it was used by one of the barn cats as a resting place in nasty weather. Sunday, at the Open House, Gordon McQuerry, a local musician who also stacked our firewood for us, pulled it out of the barn and sat on it while he and his brother accompanied the RISSE soccer team as they sang “We Are The World” and had scores of people crying.

We pondered it today. Should we throw it out? I told Maria I imagined that she would one day make some artful thing out of it, like she has the old chairs in in the barn attic. So we found a new home for it, in the space between the stacked wood in the woodshed. It looks at home there.

We are not ready to let it go. We have rescued many things in our time together, a good number from the dump. I think the Pink Rescue Chair will stay with us. One day, Maria will seize on some idea for it.

I love this about our lives. At no point in my former life would I ever have considered taking a tattered old beauty l like this home. Not it seems quite natural.