Finding Your Inner Child

We unloaded the wooden rocking chair from my mom’s van - the chair she and my dad stained from naked wood before I was born; the chair that rocked newborn babies, entertained climbing toddlers, and smashed a few toes in its thirty years of service to our family. With my mom finally ready to part with it, I gave it a new home beside my bedroom window.

I ran my fingers over the nicks and dents from falling objects, flying toys, and rambunctious pets. I noticed places where the stain has been thinned by years of friction. Despite its scars, it remains mostly unchanged, a pillar of consistency through a life full of transformation. 

I sat in the very seat where my little toddler feet stood almost three decades ago and felt my earliest childhood memory begin to resurface. Facing backward toward the living room window with my little hands clasped around the dark wood, I would rock to the rhythm of the blinking light on the electrical tower in the distance, captivated by the red ball in the sky and completely convinced that my motion controlled its steady flash. 

That was before the reality of divorce, death, and taxes taught me that control is an illusion. That was before I became weighted with memories of the past and worries for the future. That was before I experienced emotions like grief and disappointment. That was before life disrupted the peaceful innocence of a toddler lost in a simple moment of joy. 

I have often longed for the return of that innocence and for years I wondered if the memory of it was the closest I would ever come to experiencing it again. Sitting in that chair, I felt the thirty year gap begin to close. I may have lost sight of that innocence, but the innocence itself was never really lost. I am still that toddler. Somewhere along the unstoppable river of time, that toddler is still rocking in that chair, still fascinated by the light in the distance, still peacefully lost in a simple moment of joy. 

I turned myself around in the seat and knelt on the faded wood. Facing backward toward the bedroom window, I held on to the back of the chair and rocked to the rhythm of the swaying trees.

This is a Bigger Picture Moment.

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