The Chair

It was a rocker-recliner . . . in a living room . . . in Massachusetts, Maine and Ohio. Actually, it wasn’t just one chair—but a series of chairs in five different homes over more than thirty years.

The chair was upholstered in some shade of brown or tan with flecks of other colors–the fabric soft, warmed easily by a body. As it aged the chair would bear imprints from long sessions with its owner. It bore telltale signs of spilled coffee and baby formula. Sometimes there were stains from other forms of nourishment or body waste from nearly eighty infants and toddlers that shared that chair with me over the years.

As parents and foster parents we almost always had babies in our home. My wife did the night duty, waking up to take care of infant cries and hungers and needs. In the morning while she slept, I would prepare breakfast for older children, get them dressed and out the door for school. When the baby would wake, I’d take care of the diaper and prepare the warm formula. Then we would head for the chair.

In the evening while my wife got other kids ready for bed, I would get the infant duty again. Usually with a cover, bottle or pacifier we would make a beeline for the chair.

Wrapped securely in a receiving blanket as in swaddling cloths, baby and I would settle in. If she was upset or crying, we would rock while I tempted her with a warm bottle or would pat her softly on the back waiting for a burp. If quiet, I would sometimes pull the footrest up and recline. For, you see, it was my job, my sacred duty, to teach everyone of those new human beings how to fall asleep and take a nap!

Sitting, reclining, rocking—the chair was a refuge. Nuzzled in the chair—I would hum, sing softly, and breathe in the aromas of infancy: shampoo, powder, ointments, and formula. With all due humility, the chair and I would eventually coax the most abused and colicky children to fall soundly asleep. I taught by example: it wasn’t unusual for my wife to wake me at one or two in the morning to encourage me to put baby in his crib and to come to bed.

To be in the chair was to be truly at home, a place of refreshment and rest. Holding a tiny infant, listening to soft breathing, smelling that sweet newborn scent, relaxed by slow rocking—I would ponder the child’s future and wonder what life might hold and mean for him, for her, for me and my loved ones.

O, the tales that chair could tell about the miles that were rocked, the years that were slept, the dreams that were dreamt, and the man and the children that were nurtured within it. 

–John Paddock