Rocking Chairs
It wasn’t fancy rocking chair, but I remember almost every detail about it. It had a rough fabric- a flower pattern that wouldn’t pass as “stylish” by any means. It was old and its cushions were flat from use.
I can still hear the rhythmic creak of the aging metal joints in the chair as we would rock back and forth. I created a mental picture of those joints and have a very clear image of which portions of that rocking chair’s frame were causing the squeak. Whether I was accurate or not, I’ll never know. But I do know that those creaks were perfectly consistent with every shift of my weight; no matter if I was laying in it sideways, upside down, or with my face on the deployed leg rest.
There was something about the way the a slight movement could start the gentle sway back and forth in that chair that captured me. Augmented by the way I could add a slightly lighter movement to keep the motion of the rocking chair going.
There was a point where the chair’s rocking, my slight leg movements to maintain the motion, the creaks of the frame, my breathing, and even my heart beat reached a point of harmony. A perfectly consistent state of seemingly perpetual motion. I could fall asleep in that synchrony.
That chair was always waiting for me in my hardest times. Often, it would sit there empty: beckoning me come and sulk. Other times, it would implore me to release nervous energy. Still other times, it would be adorned with my father, softly humming hymns and primary songs to calm me at all hours of the night.
For a few years in high school, I jumped from therapist to therapist trying to find one used techniques that worked for me. One of the failed attempts was to find a peaceful place in my mind that I could go to in order to be centered and grounded. After weeks of trying to find this place, the therapist I was seeing at the time finally conceded that there was no happy place for me to find. That always bothered me.
For years I felt this nagging that I had failed at this one challenge. I had even found other therapists and techniques that were affective for treating my mood disorders but the fact that I couldn’t find a happy place always made me feel, somehow, broken. Dysfunctional. Defective. That is, until many years later.
As a father two my second child, I found myself rocking her to sleep. I was blessed to be rocking her in one of three rocking chairs in my home. I rocked and rocked and rocked as my daughter attempted to fight sleep. When I stopped rocking, her eyes would jolt open. When I resumed, her eyes would fade, roll, and finally close. It was this evening when I realized I had a “happy place” after all. That old, rough, flat rocking chair I grew up in.
The chair that I was perfectly myself. The chair that I got to snuggle my parents in until I was far too old to be snuggling. The chair that I would plop into when I was sick or tired. The chair that I’d nervously rock in while waiting to go somewhere. That was the place I was safe. That chair could grab my negative emotions straight from my head and dispose of them into a place that only heaven is aware of. That chair could take my creative thoughts and rile them up until I couldn’t take it any more and had to act on them. It could take my anxiety away and bolster my mood.
To this day, if there’s a rocking chair in the room, you will, more than likely, find me gravitating to it. In my own home, rocking chairs are plenty. Yet no matter the quality of the cushions; the ability to glide, rock, or twist; whether it reclines or massages; no chair will ever match the authenticity of that rocking chair I grew up in.