My mother had a chair that when she sat in it, she was invisible. At first she put it in a corner where she would be unseen and could not be found and where she would hide from our rambunctiousness and our needs and our growing for hours. But then she put the chair in the middle of the living room or the dining room or the hall; we never knew where it might be. It was her Christmas chair. It was blue. When she was in it, we couldn’t talk to her, and though this was consternating at first, we got used to it. It really was as if she wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened to the chair, or, rather, what we came to call The Chair. But it hardly matters, It’s always on my mind. Just as if it’s still there. Even though it isn’t.

Sue Allison was a reporter for Life Magazine in New York and is now living in Washington, D.C. She got her MFA at Vermont College for Fine Arts and her work has received a Pushcart Prize and been included in Best American Essays.