In My Father’s Armchair

(4/17/11)

When on a gray February morning a truck with a 20’ shipping container backed up at Paul Klee Strasse 21 in Heidenheim it was not yet clear that the brown leather armchair with its narrow hardwood legs would make it on to the truck. Neither the armchair with the small hint of “ears” nor the compendium loveseat sofa had the yellow stickers on them that Bodo, Dirk and I had applied to furniture earlier in January when we had set out together to check on the inventory and get the family house ready for sale. Yellow stickers meant pick-up by Hasenkamp, the Shipper Dirk had found on the Internet who had proven to be a lot cheaper than the local Hartmann mover who’s company logo is still adorning one of the model trucks I had already taken from my parent’s attic at a much earlier time.

I sat in the back of Dirk and Wesley’s rented Mercedes on the way to Heidenheim. There we met Bodo who came separately with Waltraud so they could also visit her parents. Bodo still has his other Heidenheim connection. Mine has much diminished with Opa Karl barely being at his house anymore, Inge’s grave abandoned and Babette dead. This trip was, in fact, almost like the nail in the coffin. The three brothers gathering around a table for a quick lunch in the Niko the Greek’s urban restaurant next to City Hall. The city seemed dull and an outpost. Was this our minds playing tricks on us to make it easier to lose this adopted hometown as a destination port? Or a realistic comparison with the vibrant Stuttgart or the medieval half timbered cuteness of Herrenberg?   

Pulling up Paul Klee Strasse between the concrete garage boxes and dirty snow piles one last time in front of the white bungalow with the pine trim and the dark weathered concrete roof tiles the feeling of good riddance got even stronger. We still had the key that has fit the front door since the house was originally built and finished in 1971, just when I had left for college. Now it was rather cold inside and in the state of half abandonment. There was still plenty of furniture for sure, but already nobody had lived there for almost two months. Christmas and New Year had passed without a single light going on or off inside, without any bed being warmed by family. We kept ourselves busy with shipping logistics and cataloging what should go where. This way emotions couldn’t  creep in too much among the three of us, each unsure who would be most attached to this place and each in the Philipsen manner ready to fight off these sentiments in favor of  some better future.  As the father had expressed it when he had stood with Bodo in the attic in front of TV cameras for this TV documentary about old people moving into assisted living. He battled emotion one could see it when his eyes turned stern and he pronounced that it was necessary to look forward. This is what we kids had learned from him and that is what we employed here in January and before we had seen the documentary. His words and views were long burnt into our brains, we didn’t need TV to remind us.

Now in March and thousands of miles further west, the season still rather cool and wintery, I sit in his armchair in front of the wood stove with its comforting flames flickering and heating our Blacksburg cabin. I had taken the cardboard box from our monthly storage facility and pushed into the back of the station wagon. It was the first item to be freed from its wrapping. This one piece transformed the rustic simplicity of cabin and added elegance where there had been only plainness. Added the somewhat uncertain English den style that he had selected for the room sometime after it had completed its service as guestroom and had become his study, his refuge. Squarish and simple in its lines but with the unpretentious, conservative elegance that comes with a price and from careful craftsmanship and careful material selection. Nothing I would have chosen for my study and even less for the cabin. But now fate had brought it here because the shipping container had still space left after all stickered items had been loaded. The B list got a chance.

 Now, sitting in it and trying to find a comfortable position in it’s not so ergonomic shape I feel that these items from the added items list might have been maybe the most important ones, the ones from his refuge away his wife’s relentless television. This chair was where he sat and read his magazines, his newspapers and books. I felt satisfaction and accomplishment to have brought it here at considerable cost and up the cabin steps even with some physical exertion.

But I also feel guilty of sitting in this chair, having pilfered it and taken it from an abandoned house that seemed like it was waiting for the return of his owners. And I felt a foreshadowing of the time when I wouldn’t have my father anymore but just his chair. This mixture of accomplishment,  guilt, obligation and some sadness is well known to the son for most of his life.