I remember the cherry rocker that was in our home. It had come to our house from my maternal grandmother.
I recall that when I was in high school, Grandma Ahern told me that the rocker had been her mother’s chair, and that she’d gotten it from her mother. Grandma Swanson, who was actually my great grandmother, had brought it over “on the boat” from Sweden or perhaps her mother had; that’s a little fuzzy.
Sometime around 1963, when I was a sophomore in high school, my grandmother told me the rocker was 120 years old. That would make the date of the manufacture of the rocker sometime around 1843. The chair was in use in our home. It had some sort of a hand sewn cushion on the seat, multi-color, in a coil pattern. I believe it matched a rug that was round, coiled, and multi-colored. My mother and grandmother loved that chair, because it was Grandma Swanson’s.
The finish on the rocker is original, and shows wear from generations of women using it. Those women include Hazel, Mary Louise, Barbara, Diane, Wendy and now Mary Ellen.
There is a place on each side of the rocker where the hands are to be placed, and in that place the finish is somewhat burnished from all the hands of these many fine women.
I know their hands touched those places. Some many years or decades ago, and in Mary Ellen’s case, perhaps yesterday.
My mother died in 1974. My sister Diane ended up with the household belongings when my father, now long gone, moved to Florida after my mother’s death. The chair was in my sister’s home until her death, on March, 7, 2013. She had it amidst a bunch of stuff, in her basement.
Today, it has a nice spot in our living room, by the window, and a new multi-colored coiled cushion.
