Rock Rock Chair

Sleep-eating a carrot in the rock rock chair

This was first posted May 30, 2009 on my other, now dearly departed blog.

I slept most of the night in the baby's room, sitting awkwardly in the big rocking chair.  The baby wasn’t feeling well, though we never did find out what was going on.  He would cry every time we set him down in bed so it was just easier to hold him.  We did try letting him cry for a little while to see if he was just messing with us, but it was hard to listen to his crying.  Because he’s such a good baby, and normally so great about just plopping down in bed and going to sleep, we figured it must the real deal.

Normally the chair rips my back or neck apart and after one night of sitting there, I pay for about four days.  But this morning I actually don’t feel too bad.  As I sat there, I thought about when we first bought that chair, just over nine years ago.  Our oldest was a bad sleeper and needed to be rocked to sleep every night.  This is a luxury reserved only for the oldest child.  I’m not sure if that’s because you don’t have as much time with the second child, or if you just learn your lesson and get better at saying, no.  Probably a bit of both.

Every night I would settle into the chair and she would lie across my lap.  She would use one armrest as a pillow and the other for her feet.  Most nights I would get up within 30 minutes or an hour and drop her in her bed.  But some nights I would fall so deeply to sleep that I would end up spending the entire night there, sitting in the chair.

We bought this chair a few months after Kris died.  My mom got some money in an insurance settlement and gave some to each of her boys to buy something to remind us of Kris.  With part of the money, I bought a nice watch at a pawn shop.  Kris spent a lot of time in pawn shops, so I thought it would be a good way to connect with him.  I found a store near his home, one I assumed he had been in from time to time, and there found just the right watch for me.

With most of the rest of the money, we bought a big, blue, rocking recliner chair.  I remember standing years ago at his grave, crying and telling him how we would rock our children to sleep in the chair and tell them stories about the uncle they never met.  If not perfectly, this is a promise I have tried hard to keep.

In many ways, this chair has come to represent, or even take the place of my brother.  It has become literally, his contribution toward raising some of his nieces and nephews.  Bought with the most precious money I have ever held, this chair has served our family well.  And all these years later, it’s still fairly nice, though a little dated, and showing signs of those many, long hours service to our family.

It won’t be long until our baby doesn’t need to be rocked each day for a few minutes at bedtime.  And eventually the long nights of rocking a sick child in the chair will only be a memory.  But, even when the old chair’s productive years of service have passed, we will still keep it around for a long, long time.

Clark