A Game of Thrones

I’ve never watched the show but I thought it might be a good title for today’s essay.

I love chairs. Chairs aren’t just a piece of furniture you can sit on. Chairs are art. Chairs are history. Chairs are filled with possibility. The majority of the chairs in my home have had many lives before me. They’ve been in office waiting rooms for forty years. They’ve been in a stranger’s upper duplex on Montreal’s South Shore. They’ve belonged to dear friends long before they’ve ever belonged to me. Children have bounced on their seats. Their backrests have been decorated with wax crayons. Chairs tell a story. And I love stories.

I live with my husband and son in a small two-bedroom apartment in Montreal. It’s a good thing I don’t have a basement or storage space, because I would definitely have a chair collecting problem. I always manage to keep myself in check… Except for that one time I decided I’d run a boho chair business from home.

The year 2016 feels like a lifetime ago. The exact date? I don’t know. But I do remember being home, having called in sick from work. This was a frequent scenario since returning to my full-time job after maternity leave. I was constantly running on empty, constantly feeling unwell. I was nursing my self-diagnosed laryngitis on the couch with my phone in one hand and the TV remote in the other, as one usually does, when a specific kind of chair appeared on my Instagram feed. It was beautiful. Its large, curved backrest was reminiscent of a bird’s feathers. It shone like gold thanks to its natural rattan structure. It reminded me of a throne. Wow. It was a vintage peacock chair.

Intrigued, I spent the afternoon going down the rabbit hole of peacock chairs. Hollywood actresses like Marilyn Monroe had been photographed on them. They appeared in iconic movies and on famous album covers. It was Morticia Addams’ chair. My heart fluttered, signalling a soon-to-be-born obsession. The people posing on that chair all had one thing in common: they looked poised and powerful. The peacock chair was, without any doubt in my mind, a throne. The person sitting on it was the ruler. 

I needed one immediately.

And so my hunt began. I came across a gorgeous chair on Etsy. The seller, a guy from the States, was offering his for a thousand dollars. Forget it. I kept digging. I opened the Kijiji app on my phone to find one locally. I typed “Vintage peacock chair,” and nothing came up. So I tweaked the search settings to include other regions up to 200 km. Bingo.

Vintage peacock chair - EXCELLENT CONDITION $60

Rattan peacock chair for sale $20

One-of-a-kind peacock chair $55

I clicked on the listings and realized they were all in Ottawa, Ontario. Two hours from Montreal. Then I switched to French keywords and typed “chaise en rotin vintage” in the search bar. That’s when I saw it. It was huge. And it was only fifteen dollars.

I sent a private message to the seller to ask if the chair was still available. It was. My throat suddenly felt better.

Over the next several months, I spent my free time hunting down vintage peacock chairs between Montreal and Ottawa. My intention? Become the city’s premier boho chair dealer. It sounded better than being an overworked, exhausted mother. I filled our petite space with rattan pieces, and at one point had seven peacock chairs in my home, three in my living room and the other four stacked one on top of the other in the nursery. One chair didn’t suffice. I wanted more. Always more. I collected and resold, hunted down and collected and resold again. The hunt was so thrilling. The deal-making a shot of adrenaline. It made me forget about my year of sleep-deprivation, of the constant daycare viruses, the rushing home after work to a hungry child, the constant ping-pong game between my husband and me to keep our household running. 

The boho chair business was my side hustle. It was a preview of another life possible. Driving around town and searching for treasures was more alluring than always running. I always had a tickle in my throat, threatening to become worse. There was always a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach I couldn’t quite understand.

The problem with looking outwards for relief and empowerment is that it never works. It didn’t matter how many chairs I sold. The rush was temporary. I was just playing games. The laryngitis always came back. The funny feeling in my stomach only became stronger. 

Months later, I had no choice but to stop playing games. It was my body’s idea. I went on sick leave and sold the remaining chairs, except for one. I couldn’t let my favourite go: a replica of the Morticia Addams chair. Who says you can’t address your issues on a rattan throne?

*Huge thanks to my parents, who are now storing my throne in their basement until I get a bigger place. I hope they know that might never happen or take many, many years.