It wasn't that I never liked rocking chairs; it was more like I couldn't see how they would be particularly useful.
Growing up, into my teens, 20s, 30s, I'd sit in a rocking chair at my sister's house once in a while, rock back and forth a few times, wish I could get what was supposed to be so special, so relaxing, about it.
The truth is, at best sitting in a rocking chair made me feel a little queasy, a little anxious, like I should just get up already. I mean, if I'm expending all this energy to stretch my legs back and forth, I might as well be doing something, right?
I love the way they look, don't get me wrong, and I always have. I have my grandmother's antique green rocker, which I've moved around with me since I had my first apartment 20 years ago. For most of those years, I didn't sit in it much. I enjoyed having it, not using it.
I love wooden rockers the best, even the naked variety you can get at the unfinished furniture store. Too look at, I've always found them mysteriously beautiful. To sit in them, well, I never quite could relax.
Then Jenna came along, and into her little baby room went a rocking chair for mommy, eventually a nice big rocker with a tall back, and a soft pastel cushion. Little did I know that this sturdy wooden rocker and I would become long-time companions.
Children change everything. Nursing changes everything. Yes, even how you feel about furniture.
For more than a year, I sat in that chair every night, at first nursing that sweet and never-tired bundle to sleep, and when bottle came along, it was the same place, same routine, back and forth we'd rock, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, letting down and drinking in each other's eyes, daughter to mother to daughter: you are so wonderful.
When it wasn't me rocking, it was George, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Reading and humming until she would finally give in to sleep.
It wasn't until I re-arranged Jenna's room a few months back that I finally moved the rocker out to give her more room for her toys and books. The rocking chair had become more a chair for a dozen stuffed animals, for half-dirty-but-still-wearable clothes, for pens and pencils, for stubbing our toes on, than a rocking chair. So I lugged it down to George's studio where it holds a bundle of cords and equipment that aren't quite meant for a rocking chair either.
I hadn't missed the chair, nor the rocking, hadn't even thought about it until tonight when I was laying at the foot of Jenna's bed, trying to coax her to rest on this night when she was having a particularly difficult time falling asleep. Without thinking, I took my leg, half off the bed already, and pushed my foot against her dresser, and started to gently rock the bed, slowly and gently, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. For a long time. And I thought back to how the room once looked, the corner where the chair had once sat. How different the world had become in just six years.
Back and forth, back and forth, thoughts subsided, followed by that opiate rush. mmmmmmmmmm.
It wasn't long before she was asleep, and it wasn't long before I realized that once you've rocked your baby to sleep, you never experience rocking quite the same way again.
I don't think it matters if you don't rock again until your 60 or 70 or 100--when you start rocking, the mystery tells its tale backwards to you. It all comes back: the let down, the blessing of that hormonal opiate, nature's way of removing the fear and the awkwardness, and the magnitude of new motherhood. Rocking brings with it the magic of forgetting that you haven't slept in days, weeks, months. With baby rocking, the way everything is fades so far away.
Fade away, fade away, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
Six years now past my days of rocking and feeding baby, tonight's bedtime rocking session was a treat for me. It was a treat remembering the softness, the comfort, the awe, the certainty, the unknowing, the pleasure of it all.
And, I heartily admit, a treat to know I don't have to do the same thing again in 3 hours.
The beauty of the back and forth moves within the memories that come back--and forth, and back, and forth--when you rock. The sweetness in having rocked is that you can always rock.
