My Cream Colored Escape: Julie on Balance

To look at the rocker in “the girl’s” room earns nothing more than a glance in the light of day. It is uneven and off-white in color, and as its current but not original owners we remain unsure of whether this was per-design or due to hours of previous human exposure. When tipped to its extreme it is most certainly a risk in safety, and it spins around at alarming speeds for a decades-old chair. The ottoman that sits obediently at its face wants desperately to match, but dressed in different cloth and aged in a different shade, it is not fooling anyone.

At night, though, the mottled color and presence of this chair takes on an entirely different existence. At night, this rocker that comforted my grandmother for decades, this rocker that comforted my grandfather that has since left our precious earth, this rocker that soothed the cries of my first born, soothed the cries of my second born, and most has certainly absorbed more than its fair share of my own tears, this rocker is magical.

And today my hours in this chair seem to be whittling. My second and, barring extreme circumstance, last baby is weening off the breast. I am forced to realize the independence of a baby once entirely dependent on me, while admittedly celebrating the independence that it brings to self. Such a mix of emotion, such a challenge of nature. I am unsure of whether to smile and have a drink or shed a tear for my loss. To celebrate the regain of my physical body or to mourn the transformation of what morphed it in the first place.

Perhaps now my cream-colored escape will soothe yet another existence… that of a mother and her own need for understanding what independence means.

This piece first appeared as a comment on 14 Summers.