rocking chair | reverse threading

it’s a classic story. an age-old story.

it was after a photo shoot – for pictures with which to list it for sale – that i discovered it.

this old rocking chair had been with him for decades. his studio chair, he bought it in a colorado mountain town and it traipsed along with him, re-homing down south, to los angeles, to seattle. it was one of the few items – outside of paintings – that made the cut when we moved him here in a budget truck.

when it arrived here it became a studio chair once again, tucked into his basement studio next to the rocking chair in which i rocked my babies.

but now, in the process of cleaning out and going through, he has decided it has run its course. this beautiful chair needs restoring. caning is missing and, if someone rathers finished over organic, it needs sanding and some good varnish. with really good bones and a decade of life-patina, it’s ready to move on.

we brought it upstairs for the shoot and i took photos of each angle and turned leg. doing research on mission style rockers like this i came across where to find identifying information. so i went back out into the living room to look more closely.

and there it was.

the word “wisconsin”.

to say i was a bit stunned would be an understatement.

diving into it, i discovered that this chair was made by the wisconsin chair company in port washington – just up the lakefront from us sometime around the early 1900s.

this chair – after a century of domestic travel – had come home.

i asked him if he wanted to keep it – knowing this new detail of the chair’s history. he said it was still time for the chair to move on, to be loved into renewal.

i’m wondering if this rocking chair had anything to do with david finding home – after a lifetime of living other places. if this chair somehow had strong enough ties to this place that it created the circumstances in which we met. if this chair had a gravitational pull back to wisconsin so strong that it brought david here, instead of the reverse. if this rocking chair brought him home.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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when i saw aly a few weeks ago she was holding her sweet baby boy landon in her arms and she told me that every night he goes to sleep with this album playing. ian joked that landon doesn’t make it much past the first three pieces, so maybe they should start it in the middle so they would be able to hear more of it. either way, hearing snippets or the whole hour of lullabies, i am touched that this little boy is gently going off to sleep with this music playing him into dreams.

i recorded this album after many others. i had already recorded six original cds, three christmas albums, two retro 60s/70s albums, two hymn albums and several singles by this point. but many of the shops stocking my albums and listeners who had purchased albums asked me about a lullaby album. it was with the picture in my heart of rocking (or walking) my own children to sleep that i researched lullabies, wrote a couple original pieces and spent time in the studio at yamaha artist services in nyc recording this.

some of my most precious memories are of My Girl or My Boy drifting off to sleep as i sat in the rocking chair in the nursery watching the seasons change out the window. i would read goodnight moon and sing quietly to them. then i would tiptoe out of the room, careful to avoid the spots in the old wood floor that would creak under my steps.

and so, it is an amazing thing knowing that there are moms and dads out there in the world, rocking tenderly or softly slipping out of their nursery with my album AND GOODNIGHT playing their cherished baby into sweet sleep.