Moving On

Philadelphia

It's drizzling rain out my window. A chestnut and white red-shouldered hawk is poking around in the soil near the stream. All the woodpeckers--red bellied, flicker, downy--are chipping away at the suet cage. The stream bank swells, bubble gum sized raindrops landing on the moving current of water.

I'm leaving today, after this three weeks of recovery here in the woods, tucked away. When I came it was sunny and 70. I sat in the chair on the water's edge, watching the current carry it in the rivulets, tumbling over rocks on its way downstream. I counted the hours until I would feel better, stronger, clearer.

I am all of those things, albeit not ( as you, dear readers know ) to my timeframe. So, I've packed: a chocolate Easter bunny for Ethan, groceries left in the fridg, a bottle of nice Rose I found last week, the books I didn't read, the stories I didn't edit, the research data I didn't review. And my rocking chair, an old white thing that I was given by a family friend, Ruth Perley.
She gave it to me when I was newly married, and desperate for any old furniture.


It was painted a sad-looking dusky orange with a thick seat and slender curved back.

"This was my uncle's chair," she began as she wiped the dust off of the turned arm rests.

She ran her slender hand across the curved back. "Because of his emphysema, he couldn't sleep in a flat bed. So, he had this made for him of native hardwoods around 1900."

I put my hands on the chair arms, ready to carry it to the car. "This is the longest, skinniest rocker I've ever seen," I said, hoping she didn't mistake my assessment as lack of gratitude.

" I think so, too. But, it fit him perfectly--he was a Yankee, a tall, stubborn old Vermonter."

As it turned out, it fit me just perfectly, too.

Over the past 38 years, it has seen many different colors and decorations. Everything from Pennsylvania Dutch design decals and matching cushion to one very ambitious time when I decided to strip all of the years of paint off of it. ( Way too much time on my hands at that particular moment! ). Peeling away layer after layer, I finally found the original--the seat, easily 6 inches thick, was one piece of ash, the arms of pine.

This old handmade chair is rough hewn. Not the particular style of my New York apartment. But, it belongs there for now, with a needlepoint cushion that my mother stitched. It's ruggedness is going to remind me of the stream, the hawk, the woods so I can remember.

When I moved into this country house years ago, I called it my "Innisfree" from the Yeats poem. Certainly, the time here has been all the things that poem suggests.



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I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
--William Butler Yeats