Habit in a Chair

Habit is a curious thing. I’m a creature of radical habit, so I guess I’m a curious thing as well. Maybe a radical curious thing. Three and a half years ago, I underwent knee replacement surgery, a procedure that realigned much of the way I live my life, at least on a mundane day-to-day level. I never did undergo any of the revelations or transformations that I’ve heard some people experience after major surgery (and, frankly, that I kind of hoped I would experience). I did, though, change the chair where I sit in our living room. I spent four days in the hospital after surgery, undergoing initial physical therapy, reading, watching TV, and being bored to the point of second-guessing the decision to be able to walk again without pain. The morphine helped, though. I came home to a week of lying in bed, when I wasn’t doing physical therapy or relearning how to go to the bathroom, surrounded by more reading, more TV, and at least the proximity of vodka. After about a week, I was able to make my way down the stairs on crutches to the living room, albeit for only more reading, more TV, and more vodka, though in a more open space than the confines of the bedroom. One of the numerous physical therapy exercises I endured was stretching my knee by wrapping a cloth around my foot and pulling the ball of my foot to give tension. This was best done sitting in our stuffed arm chair with ottoman. For years prior to my surgery, my chair was an antique Morris recliner that my father had rescued from the basement of a crazy neighbor who had been carted off to the loony bin. I had had it reupholstered once and the springs restrung once in the 20 years I sat in it for hours on a daily basis. But after my knee surgery, the physical therapy moved me to the stuffed arm chair with ottoman (and moved my wife from that chair to the couch). I worked through physical therapy for more than six months, at the end of which sitting in the stuffed arm chair had become my new habit. And three years later, I’m still here. The antique Morris recliner is still here too, but it’s a habit from the past. You can’t return to a former habit, no matter how long you had it or feel nostalgic for it, when you’ve acquired a new habit. Curious.