An old oak rocker, more than 100 years old, sits in my study where I can see it as I write. It was my grandma's rocker. The golden grain where her arms wore through the blackened patina is still visible. I like to think that its oak remembers the best moments of my childhood―sitting on my Grandma's lap, nestling my head into the crook of her neck and listening as the rocker set up a low, creaking counter-melody for the hymns she hummed in an octave that registered somewhere between soprano and mosquito.
As soon as I was old enough to cross the pasture by myself and crawl through the wooden slats of the gate at the top of the hill where her house was, I spent most afternoons on her lap. It never occurred to me that my mother had called ahead to let her know I was on my way. I just assumed she sat in her rocker all day waiting for me to show up.
"Help yourself to a cookie," she'd call out when I opened the back door. I'd climb the step-stool by the kitchen counter, lift the lid from the ceramic jar that was always filled with sugary sweets, and then run to her outstretched arms. Grandpa was often there, too, in his rocker facing hers. They told stories back and forth, correcting each other's version of adventures in their lives, answering my incessant questions. Sometimes the Chinese checker board would be set up between them, with me on Grandma's lap helping her to win. But what I remember most about those afternoons were her arms wrapped around me and her singing along with the creaking of the rocker, the music carrying the two of us into a world where I was totally loved.
Ellie and Jake were married September 17, 1899 when she was 16 years old and he was 20. She was "overwhelmed," the way she told it. She'd always wanted to be a teacher, and he'd wanted a college education, as well. Instead, they started a family and watched their children and grandchildren fulfill those dreams.
Their first baby arrived in March of 1900. The oak rocker was bought off of Dr. Williams sometime around then. That much is known from the yellowed label Ellie had glued to the bottom of the chair in the '50's when she set about deciding who would get what after they died. Maybe turning 70 set her to thinking about getting those details sorted.
There was an ironic bit at the bottom of the label. It read: Mother's Easy Chair. From what I know now as an adult, there was nothing easy about her life in that rocker, where she darned hundreds of socks and patched clothes until they could no longer be “hand-me-downs" for the kid next in line. What was too worn to wear became braided rugs for the floor or fashioned into “dolly clothes” for the girls. Bright coloured patches, which paid homage to every dress and curtain she ever made, were worked into magnificent quilts. All the household linens had her embroidered flowers or blue birds with French knot eyes. I recall there were always snippets of embroidery floss strewn beneath her rocker, with the red, tin button box and her silver thimble on the window seat. All this after a full day's work of gardening, canning, feeding the family and farmhands, working in their grocery store in town, or making homemade Jersey ice cream to sell in their roadside stand.
I think of how she nursed nine babies in this chair. And when baby Henry and little Lillian fell ill and died, I can imagine how its creaking became the drone beneath her grief-soaked prayers.
Ellie was a traditional woman of her times. In her 70 years of marriage, the household and garden were under her domain. She presided over these realms with a keen eye for detail and order. But her rocker was perhaps the only spot in the house that she could truly call her own. In that sense, I can understand how she would think of it as her easy chair.
Years after my grandparents had died there was a farm auction in my family. I recognized something discarded in a trash bin. It was the old ceramic cookie jar with its lid broken and the painted design mostly chipped off. What a find, I thought! Later I was stunned when my aunt, who had inherited the old rocker, decided to give it to me. Today, the cookie jar sits by the rocker.
I've rocked both of my children in that old, oak rocker. I like to think my kids have a memory of the songs I sang to them as I closed my eyes and heard Grandma harmonizing with me to the creaking of her chair.
~K L Kurtz
Left: Jake and Ellie, c.1960s, standing by their Golden Fall Rambo tree which produced so many apples that year they had to prop up the ladened branches. Ellie claimed this variety made the best applesauce.
Lower Left:
Jake and Ellie, wedding portraits, c.1899
Lower Right:
E.J. and Ellen Kurtz, c. late 1950s
Other blog posts related to Kurtz ancestry:
Comments