Rocking Chair — 2021 Reading

The Chair in Question

A few people who are close to the story have been insisting that the titular Rocking Chair was made by the Rockadundee Brothers when they first settled in the woods near Springfield, but this is decidedly untrue. Yes, some people agree that Ol’ Ben Franklin invented the Rocker as we know and love today, dating our Chair to at least the late 18th century, but anyone with half a minute can discover that this is some classic American branding. When Ol’ Ben Franklin was Young Ben Franklin he was rocking back and forth on his Granny’s knee, and that’s an absolute fact. Fiddle-dee-dee to anyone who thought the Rocking Chair was made by the Rockadundees based on date-guessing and myth-moshing.

I happen to know full well how this particular Rocking Chair came to be, but the trouble is every time I attempt to describe it, I can’t figure out how. Sometimes it helps if I’m singing, but soon enough I’ll be singing about something else, or the melody will modulate outside of my range, even if I give in and exercise my falsetto. It’s not that it’s a very high song, but it’s that it’s a very strange song. Friends have suggested I try and paint the story, like one of those beautiful story quilts or a Course like our dear friend Thomas Cole, but I do not have the specificity in my style that is required. All this being said, I’m asking you to excuse this rum go at boring old prose, and if I meander, please forgive me; it’s halfway my fault and halfway the Chair’s.

So the Chair came first. People who know what the rules are about this particular Rocking Chair know that no one ever decides to own it, it is always already owned, or present. It hides right behind the idea that someone else must have brought it to a home, and no one really questions its existence or origins. Which is exactly why explaining its existence or origins is damn near impossible. The Rockadundees, the Brophys, and the Greelys all lived in a house that contained the Chair. Each family was at once unaware and aware it was there. This sounds highly unusual and confusing, but let me try and explain it this way: in your home, you have any number of decorative and aesthetic objects that were selected to be there at some point or other. As you and your home age, you begin to forget something is there even if you see and use it every day, like a whisk in one drawer or a lamp on a piano. You just stop noticing it. That’s precisely where the Rocking Chair lives, and the minute someone notices it, they never have any idea how it got there, and quickly begin to forget they noticed anything at all.

What I know of its origin I can only glean from the facts available: There was a grove of Oak trees in a forest in New England. They were cut down and carved, sawed and slimmed, stuck and set. The Oaks in question didn’t really mind, and some new saplings replaced them the following spring. The Chair, nearly black, was finished and polished. And it began its unseen journey.

Oh, who made it? We never ask who. We already know.