Before I came to love a swing, before I came to love a Ferris wheel, I loved my rocking chair. The Christmas I was not quite two, the Christmas before I crossed the broad Atlantic, the Christmas before I became, for too brief a time, the bilingual world traveler, dual citizen at heart, posing here—I loved that rocking chair!
Loved it enough to repair it, to lovingly refinish it for my own first child and daughter (as I, my mother, my grandmother before her were also first children, first daughters; as my first granddaughter would also be). As soon as she could sit unsupported, I posed my first child and daughter in that rocking chair.
Years later, I have come to understand that rocking chairs, too, become frail with time. Too frail to survive moving from home to home to home. Too frail to survive one small boy’s (my first grandson’s) love. Yet perhaps strong enough to cradle my childhood dolls, someday, when I’ve once again braced and glued and loved it back into a chair that remembers how to rock.
Loved it enough to repair it, to lovingly refinish it for my own first child and daughter (as I, my mother, my grandmother before her were also first children, first daughters; as my first granddaughter would also be). As soon as she could sit unsupported, I posed my first child and daughter in that rocking chair.
Years later, I have come to understand that rocking chairs, too, become frail with time. Too frail to survive moving from home to home to home. Too frail to survive one small boy’s (my first grandson’s) love. Yet perhaps strong enough to cradle my childhood dolls, someday, when I’ve once again braced and glued and loved it back into a chair that remembers how to rock.
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