A Rocking Chair’s Story

Kijiji portrait

An actual lifetime ago, my husband and I travelled to Calgary from Jasper to shop for a rocking chair. I was carrying a new life and the day was fast approaching when I would want to rock a small baby to sleep.

Lovers of wood, we went to Alberta Wood Products where we found THE chair – solid maple, clean lines and smooth rocking - sold!

Shortly after, I marveled at how the chair allowed me to stand up in one fluid motion making it possible to take a sleeping baby to his crib without waking him. The chair fit my baby and me perfectly. It supported my arms in a way that made him a perfect cradle of mother arms.

As the years went by, we both spent hours upon hours in that chair rocking all cozy together. Then, he started climbing into it all by himself to rock vigorously. His eyes would sparkle and his grin would take over his face as giggles burbled out of him.

Sometimes though, I’d find him in awkward positions, sound asleep. I would pick him up, wrap him his blankie and rock him back to sleep before putting him in his bed.

Then, OMG, a usurper came into the house. She was small and wide-eyed and took precedence on my lap and in our chair. Again, the chair provided the mother cradle for a little girl this time. There just wasn’t room for all three of us, but I made sure they both had time in the cradle of mom. She did all the things he did and sometimes they jockeyed for position on the chair. Of course, the day came when I found them sitting side by side with big brother “reading” little sister a book. 

The primo baby rocker of the our clan.

It worked for grandmothers too and visiting mothers with babes. Pretty much any mother-ish or grandmother-like women with any child under 3.5 feet tall. Of course, it also worked for father-ish and grandfather-like men. My father, in particular, liked to hold anyone under teenager. (His qualifier for small child got older as he did.)

Then one day, all the kids were big and all the adults were exhausted and fighting over Lazyboys. So for a long time, I wondered why I kept it. But then a miraculous thing happened. Some of the adults started moving back to the rocker. It offered good support and made it easy to stand up. So, the senior senior citizens picked it first, then the senior siblings.

Empty nest came for me in 2011 and I sold my house to go tripping around the world.

See how happy it made people?

Everything had to go to a new home or storage. Storage costs money, so everything, absolutely everything was for sale - even the rocking chair.
 
A funny thing happens to people when they look for second-hand goods. I’ve done it myself. You want a good quality, second hand widget and you hope that you will find gold selling for a song. You know you’ve found a high quality product for a reasonable price and still you want it for half the asking price. We want the king’s belongings for a pauper’s pay.

So, the rocking chair went into storage because I would not give it away. I wanted someone to see its value. It came out of storage in 2013 and today someone saw its value on Kijiji.

He dropped by this afternoon, sat in the rocker and broke into a smile. An older man with a British accent, he checked it all out and I could see him becoming more pleased the more he looked.

“Enjoy it,” I said as I helped him load it into his vehicle. “I have some emotional attachment to it.”

“Oh, I will,” he said as he carefully positioned a cushion to keep the wood from banging itself up on the drive home. “You can be confident it’s going to a good home.” 

That's all I really wanted for it.