Heritage column for Nov. 25
In the great division of things that follows the closing of a family home, the rocking chairs were not the kind of pieces over which there would have been a tug of war. They were not particularly attractive. They would not have much monetary value. They do not match with the décor.
But the two old rockers offered something that no new pieces of furniture could match, no amount of money could buy and no home should be without. They represented memories and I claimed the rockers and the memories.
My earliest memories center on those two rocking chairs that occupied prominent spaces in my grandparents' home. They always were in the dining room. Actually the dining room was a dining and sitting room because it was the only room in the house which was heated in the winter.
Instead of some comfortable easy chair, my grandfather had a large oak rocker with a wooden back and leather seat. Instead of some comfy and cozy upholstered chair, my grandmother had a small cherry rocker with a cane bottom. I hardly can pass the two chairs, now in my home, without imagining the persons with whom they were so long associated.
Papa's big rocking chair was where he sat to read the newspaper and the Saturday Evening Post. He was one of the first persons in town to own a radio and the young people on the block would gather around the chair to hear broadcasts. He was one of the last persons to own a television; but when he finally surrendered, he sat in the chair to watch the comedies and Westerns that filled the airwaves of the early '60s.
Papa's rocking chair was a favorite place for his grandchildren. We would sit there in his lap. When he was not around, we would rock each other so furiously that it would be a constant source of frustration for the other adults who worried that we would break the rockers or break the head of the one taking the wild ride. Indeed the rockers are so worn and flat that the chair barely deserves the description of a rocker.
Grandma's rocker was a good size for a child and we usually could occupy it because she was too busy to sit for very long. Sometimes she sat there with some sewing in her lap. She sat and read her Sunday school lesson. She paused to enjoy some favorite soap operas: “Our Gal Sunday,” “Young Doctor Malone,” “As the World Turns.”
I remember the night that my grandfather died. It all happened in a brief time and I still remember wondering how death had slipped into our home without advance notice. The next evening when we returned after the viewing at the funeral home, I broke down when I saw the empty chair and recognized clearly that everything had changed. It shocks me to realize that 42 years have passed since that night.
My grandmother lived for another 10 years. She wrote me several times a week throughout my college days and in my first year of teaching. The letters always closed with “I love you, Grandma.” She lived to hold her first great-grandchild, our son Chris.
On this very day, November 25th, in 1972, now 32 years ago, she died-full of years and held in respect by all that knew her.
No words of tribute could ever be adequate to describe the blessing that my grandparents were to my life. They loved me before I was born. They nurtured me through my childhood. They wiped away tears, shared laughs and brought glasses of water in the night. They hired taxicabs to take me to the fairgrounds. They walked with me to the park. My grandfather walked with me down the church aisle when I joined the church; and much to everyone's amazement, he joined too. That very morning we were baptized together.
They never gave a second thought when we three children came to live with them following our parents' divorce. It was not until I was grown that I realized the disruption of their lives and the financial sacrifice that our presence must have required.
Something else happened on this very day, November 25th, in 1972. Just hours after my grandmother died, our son, Matthew, was born. Now he is grown and a father himself. Now I am the grandparent who sits in the rocking chair with a grandchild on my lap. The years move along and the old rocking chairs remain. And so do the memories on this Thanksgiving Day.
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He can be reached at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.