The Lawn Chair Philosophy

Bring Your Own Chair

Lawn Chairs (Courtesy Photo)

There are certain signs that summer has officially arrived in northern New England. The baseball diamonds are busy again, concerts return to the town green, and community calendars fill up with cookouts, church suppers, parades, fireworks, farmers markets, and backyard birthday parties. Before long, an invitation arrives with four simple words that everyone immediately understands:

"Bring your own chair."

BYOC.

It's one of those unwritten rules of summer that nobody ever had to explain. You grab a lawn chair, toss it in the back of the car, and head out. It doesn't matter whether you're going to a Little League game, a concert on the green, the Fourth of July parade, or your neighbor's cookout. The chair comes with you.

It's funny how lawn chairs have evolved over the years. When I was growing up, they were those aluminum folding chairs with brightly colored woven vinyl straps. They folded flat, occasionally pinched your fingers, and if you wore shorts, you almost always stood up with a checkerboard pattern imprinted on the backs of your legs. That was simply part of the experience. Today's chairs are another story altogether. They have cup holders, insulated drink pockets, phone holders, side tables, backpack straps, footrests, and enough adjustments to make you wonder if they're still lawn chairs or portable recliners.

I remember going to a backyard birthday party years ago when my dad showed up carrying one of the newer folding canvas rocking chairs. A rocking chair...to a birthday party. I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. Then I sat in it. Dad, once again, was ahead of the curve. Now I catch myself looking around at every outdoor gathering just to see what everyone else brought. Some folks carry the same faded chair they've owned for decades. Others arrive looking like they're prepared to spend the weekend camping in the White Mountains. Someone always has the deluxe model with enough cup holders and storage pockets to survive a small expedition. Meanwhile, I'm just hoping mine doesn't lean noticeably to one side.

The chair, however, is never really the point.

After about five minutes, nobody notices it anymore.

Instead, they notice each other.

Someone asks how your garden is growing this year. Another person wonders if you've made it out fishing yet. Someone else asks how the kids are enjoying summer vacation or whether you've made it to one of the fairs. Before long, people who arrived separately are sharing one conversation as though they'd planned to spend the afternoon together all along.

The older I get, the more I think lawn chairs do something our regular furniture never can. Our couches stay in the living room. Our kitchen tables stay in the kitchen. Lawn chairs create a gathering place wherever people happen to meet. A ballfield becomes a front porch. A town green becomes the community's living room. A backyard birthday party becomes a place where three generations sit together while children invent games that somehow involve running in circles until somebody eventually gets thirsty.

Of course, sometimes the chairs all face the same direction. At a concert, they're pointed toward the stage. During a baseball game, everyone is watching the field. At the Fourth of July parade, they're lined up along Main Street waiting for the first fire truck to round the corner.

But that's different from sitting in a theater.

There are no assigned seats.

You bring your own chair.

You choose where to unfold it.

Maybe it's beside neighbors you've known for twenty years. Maybe it's next to someone you've never met before. Either way, the conversations begin long before the music starts, continue between innings, and pick right back up once the parade passes. The chairs may face the event, but the people always face the community.

Maybe that's why summer feels different from every other season. Ironically, it's probably our busiest time of year. Between vacations, baseball games, concerts, festivals, cookouts, and family gatherings, our calendars fill up faster than they do any other time of year. Yet somehow it's also the season when we slow down the most. We unfold a chair, stay awhile, and remember how to have conversations that don't have a timer attached to them. During the rest of the year, so many of our gatherings happen indoors around conference tables, restaurant booths, classrooms, and kitchen tables. Summer reminds us that some of life's best conversations happen under an open sky while children run barefoot through the grass and somebody nearby is insisting they make the best potato salad in this part of the NEK.

That's one of the reasons I enjoy bringing my own kids along. At 12, 10, and 6 years old, they're at wonderful ages for summer adventures. They'll sit with us for a few minutes before heading off toward the playground, chasing an errant balloon, finding another group of kids, or making a beeline for the nearest snack table. Every so often they wander back because they're thirsty, hungry, or have something so important to tell Mom and Dad that it absolutely can't wait another thirty seconds. Then they're off again. Without ever talking about it, the lawn chairs become home base. They know exactly where to find us.

When I think back on summers growing up, I couldn't tell you what kind of chair my parents brought to a parade or cookout. I remember the people. I remember waiting for fireworks to begin, listening to local bands on warm evenings, laughing with neighbors, and watching adults visit while all of us kids disappeared into whatever adventure we could invent before it got dark. The chair itself was never the memory. It simply gave us a place to make one.

Maybe that's the real philosophy of the lawn chair. In a world that's always asking us to hurry to the next thing, answer another email, or cross another task off the list, the humble lawn chair quietly suggests something different. Sit down. Stay awhile. Talk with your neighbors. Watch your children make memories. Listen to the laughter happening somewhere across the field. Someday the chair will wear out. The fabric will fade, the frame will bend, and eventually it'll end up in the garage waiting for one last trip to the transfer station.

But long after the chair is gone, you'll still remember who was sitting beside you.

And if we're fortunate, we'll realize those ordinary summer evenings were some of the richest moments we ever had.