High chair.

It's Monday morning – or rather, a Monday morning-like construction of time and space in which reality loses its sharpness – and in the middle of this grey no-man's land of silence, half-full coffee cups and crumpled to-do lists, there it is: the second-hand high chair, type 'children 1-3 years', a tool of educational hope, domestic chaos and the tough remains of applesauce.

Not new, never been, and yet ineradicable, it stands like a wooden relic of crumbly mornings and miniature tantrums, its seat still soaked in the residue of countless breakfast cereals that, despite many scrubs, have become a kind of archaeological sediment. Its back rests unnaturally, not out of mechanical inability, but because it has too often served as a launching pad for toddlers who have suddenly decided that sitting still is an ideological prison.

Its seat belts—faded in color, slightly frayed at the edges—tell the story of parents trying to strap in their child with one hand while trying to save a falling plate with the other. The buckle still closes, but only with a deep sigh, as if even the metal has given up hope. And somewhere, deep in its wooden core, it seems aware of its status as a survivor, a piece of furniture that derives its identity from the fact that it was not allowed to die in the thrift store, but was chosen again for another round.

At the moment, it is – a term normally reserved for poets in existential crisis – undergoing maintenance. The shed it stands in is cold, smelling of forgotten tools and hope – or rather, the illusion of hope, because who knows if it can still cope, this chair that has experienced more phases of life than most people will ever understand? The screws are being tightened, the splinters are being sanded away, a new coat of varnish is being considered, while the chair waits in silence, unmoved and yet full of inner turmoil.

For what is it, if not a form of tragicomic reincarnation, that an object like this, burdened with the memories of unknown families, should once again enter the battlefield of children's screams, spilled yoghurt and pedagogical despair? And yet – as always – he will soon be there again, ready for use, not because he wants to, but because that is his fate.