CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS
THE OLD ROCKER
Monte W. Holland, Guest Writer
It is old. It has been stripped of a lot of layers of paint. It is unfinished. It doesn’t have any padding. It is plain. One of its rockers has been replaced. One of its legs is slightly loose from the seat.
It is a lonely seat in my bedroom. Hardly anybody sees it but me. Nobody sits on that old rocking chair but me.
I love that old chair. Almost every night I get up at three, four or five o’clock in the morning to watch some late night TV and maybe do a Sudoku puzzle. There is my chair, by the bed, patiently anticipating an hour or so of quality time with me. (click here to view photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3357877639/ )
There is just something special about sitting on that plank bottom and gently rocking on the carpeted floor. Maybe it’s the familiarity and the long-standing relationship we have.
We first became acquainted in the mid-1940’s in the kitchen of my parents’ (and my) farm home on the Maple Ridge Road in DeKalb in Northern New York. The rocker was bright blue then. There are still vestiges of that color on it now, a color that matched the paint on the wooden chairs around the kitchen table. There I would sit and rock on the linoleum floor as my mother worked in the kitchen, often baking delicious pies in the old Kalamazoo wood stove. I don’t remember much about those days, but I remember the rocker. And the one material thing that I still have from those days.
I suppose I should completely strip the paint off that old rocker and refinish it. However, it isn’t the finish that matters to me. It’s the relationship over the years, and the connection to my early formative years, that really matter to me. My chair is not a showpiece. It is my friend.
In a lot of ways we are alike. We have aged significantly. A lot of our veneers have been scraped off. Maybe our aging makes us more open to be vulnerable and more fully exposed.
No Matter! We share a special solitude together. A turbulent world showers the room with troubling images through that TV set on the table at the end of my bed. I get angry. I get frustrated. Hope sometimes ebbs when the wrong seems to be prevailing. I don’t suppose the chair has any of those feelings. The chair just does its appointed task, relieving the pain and anguish as it gently rocks and brings a steady rhythm to my body and in its special way soothes my soul.
I’m really glad that this rocking chair has remained with me through the years. What will happen to it when I am no longer here to enjoy it is a mystery that I would rather not hear about. In the meantime, my chair will provide solace for me in my room, as I watch the world pass by on the television set in the wee hours of the morning.
ADDITIONAL READING:
Writer’s calls for submissions, competitions & events March 1, 2009
Kathy Kelly, of Voices of Wilderness: On Peace
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The Old Rocker
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CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS
THE OLD ROCKER
Monte W. Holland, Guest Writer
It is old. It has been stripped of a lot of layers of paint. It is unfinished. It doesn’t have any padding. It is plain. One of its rockers has been replaced. One of its legs is slightly loose from the seat.
It is a lonely seat in my bedroom. Hardly anybody sees it but me. Nobody sits on that old rocking chair but me.
I love that old chair. Almost every night I get up at three, four or five o’clock in the morning to watch some late night TV and maybe do a Sudoku puzzle. There is my chair, by the bed, patiently anticipating an hour or so of quality time with me. (click here to view photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3357877639/ )
There is just something special about sitting on that plank bottom and gently rocking on the carpeted floor. Maybe it’s the familiarity and the long-standing relationship we have.
We first became acquainted in the mid-1940’s in the kitchen of my parents’ (and my) farm home on the Maple Ridge Road in DeKalb in Northern New York. The rocker was bright blue then. There are still vestiges of that color on it now, a color that matched the paint on the wooden chairs around the kitchen table. There I would sit and rock on the linoleum floor as my mother worked in the kitchen, often baking delicious pies in the old Kalamazoo wood stove. I don’t remember much about those days, but I remember the rocker. And the one material thing that I still have from those days.
I suppose I should completely strip the paint off that old rocker and refinish it. However, it isn’t the finish that matters to me. It’s the relationship over the years, and the connection to my early formative years, that really matter to me. My chair is not a showpiece. It is my friend.
In a lot of ways we are alike. We have aged significantly. A lot of our veneers have been scraped off. Maybe our aging makes us more open to be vulnerable and more fully exposed.
No Matter! We share a special solitude together. A turbulent world showers the room with troubling images through that TV set on the table at the end of my bed. I get angry. I get frustrated. Hope sometimes ebbs when the wrong seems to be prevailing. I don’t suppose the chair has any of those feelings. The chair just does its appointed task, relieving the pain and anguish as it gently rocks and brings a steady rhythm to my body and in its special way soothes my soul.
I’m really glad that this rocking chair has remained with me through the years. What will happen to it when I am no longer here to enjoy it is a mystery that I would rather not hear about. In the meantime, my chair will provide solace for me in my room, as I watch the world pass by on the television set in the wee hours of the morning.
ADDITIONAL READING:
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Writer’s calls for submissions, competitions & events March 1, 2009Kathy Kelly, of Voices of Wilderness: On PeaceKEEPING PEACE IN SOUTH AFRICA Part 1
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SITE LINKS:
www.beanerywriters.wordpress.com/
www.carolyncholland.wordpress.com
www.beanerywriters.wordpress.com/
www.carolyncholland.wordpress.com
www.barbarapurbaugh.com
www.pennwriters.com
ellenspain.com
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