This is where I love to sit.  In the corner with the red chair and the sun stained red ottoman and the IKEA task light that you have to jiggle to turn out and the expensive woven multi-color throw blanket from crate and Barrel that I let myself buy 9 years ago when I moved in the house that I moved into before this house.  The chair is only a place I love to in the dark and in the quiet, at the edges of the busy days I steal for myself while the rest of the house sleeps.

I didn’t buy the red chair and the matching ottoman.  They came with the house that my husband and I bought last summer.   They were originally in the front room with the big uncovered bay window, which I’m guessing is why the ottoman is so wretchedly faded.  The chair and the ottoman sit in the back of the house now, cloistered from the sun by expensive, custom made plantation shutters – I didn’t buy those either. I sit in this red chair with my feet propped up on the faded red ottoman, covered by the colorful blanket and the light from the adjustable IKEA lamp pinpointing on the cheap spiral notebook.  I sit and I write and I listen to the rain and to the silence if I’m lucky enough to hear it.

In this corner of my house, I show up to myself in the dark, spotlighted by a light that works most of the time.  I create here.  I beat myself up here, and then I ice my own wounds and coax myself back in the ring.  In this corner, I am both Rocky on the stool with a bloody eye and the old white haired coach urging “come on Rock, get back out there.”  My red chair and faded ottoman, and colorful throw and task light that works most of the time is where I am found and lost.  It is a space of retreat and advancing.  It is where I read and I write; where I pray and I complain.  Where I learn and where I teach.  It is imperfect.  It is fleeting.  The sounds of the footsteps on the stairs cut the time too short.