The Chair

I have this chair that belonged to my grandmother. It’s a terrible almost crushed velvet in emerald green. The arms are well worn and the head rest is covered in years of White Rain hairspray from when she would rock in it while drinking her umpteenth cup of coffee for the day. It was her favorite piece in her living room, and it has now become my favorite piece in my living room.

It was given to me shortly before my grandfather’s passing. As dying people do, he was giving away the less meaningful or not previously claimed items in his possession and gifted me the chair a long with a well loved vanity and two retro end tables. I hadn’t really wanted the chair but he insisted I needed it even though I already had been given my mother’s wooden rocker. I brought the green chair home and sat it up next to one of the end tables in my living room and soon found myself sitting in it frequently. It didn’t take long before I was rocking Robbie in it at nap time. It was comforting. It was almost like having my grandmother there with me, as if she was somehow getting to be with her great granddaughter and I during those precious moments.

Sometime later I moved into my current residence and the chair found itself neglected and covered in unfolded laundry and toys. I had completely forgotten its power and warmth until one evening Josiah was fussy and I was struggling to calm him on the couch. I shoved everything into the floor and took to rocking him. Soon he was softly snoring in my arms. Since that day I have rocked him at almost every bedtime in the chair while telling Zach that we can never get rid of it.

Tonight after putting Josiah to bed, I gathered Robbie up in my lap and rocked her to sleep for the first time in a few years. As she nuzzled her sweet little face into the crook of my arm and drifted off peacefully, I thought of my grandparents and how they couldn’t have known that the chair would make its way into my home and be used to comfort my babies when they purchased it over two decades ago. I thought of my grandmother with her chipped white coffee mugs filled to the brim with microwaved instant Folger’s and a napkin pressed to the bottom of the mug, gently rocking while resting before she would go out to bring the cattle in to milk in the afternoons. I thought of countless hours spent cross legged, computer in my lap, with my phone resting on the arm softly playing music as I typed out stories, read, or studied. I thought of my husband and children and how I want this chair to be significant in their memories when they look back. I thought of how something so ordinary can mean so much, which lead me to share my feelings with you, Dear Reader. If you don’t already, I hope that some day you find an everyday item that has great sentimental value and you reflect on the emotions and memories tied to it.

A Day on the Farm.

Happy first day of fall, Dear Reader. Here in Oklahoma, it's still hotter than hell on a bad day for Satan, but the meteorological professionals on the television keep promising cooler weather is on its way. I know better, however. This is Oklahoma for cryin' out loud. We get two seasons, Quakenado (Summer), and Blizzaquakenado (Winter). I'm not even kidding. Last Christmas Eve we had a tornado warning and a winter weather advisory for the same areas all day. In true Okie form, no one paid any mind to the warnings and we all celebrated our holiday.

Anyway, I'm not here to tell you about the Oklahoma weather patterns, or lack there of. No, my friend, today I'm going to tell you a little story about my grandmother, and a gorilla.

So many years ago there used to be an animal farm down the road from my house. Actually, the animal farm is still there but it is owned by a different person now. And they call it a sanctuary I believe. Anyway at the time it was one of those drive thru zoo attractions but it had a petting zoo and a few caged beasts. It was great fun, for me anyway. My poor Grandma took me there frequently and was probably bored to tears every time we went, except for the last time.

The very last time we went started out pretty normal. We drove through and saw the camels and zebras and the handful of llamas the farm had roaming around. We went to the petting zoo and I fed the baby llama that wasn't really a baby anymore. It chewed on my ear, and then spit at one of the fawns that was running around because that llama was certain that the fawn was going to steal its food and my attention. The llama was right. Eventually we migrated to the big caged animal area where there lived a giant, and I mean giant, monkey. I said earlier that it was a gorilla, and in my mind it was, but in all actuality, it was probably a chimp. This dude was old. He was rather grumpy and just ignored visitors when they came by. But for whatever reason, he was full of piss and vigor that day. He did a few typical monkey things, made some noise, threw around his toys, acted generally silly. I guess all that showing off made him thirsty so he reached through the cage and grabbed a piece of cut up garden hose, stuck it in his stock tank full of water, and got a big cool drink.

Of course I thought this was the best thing ever. I had yet to see this primate do much of anything but sit around and ignore everyone. I told Grandma how neat it was and she agreed. We stood there examining him for a bit when out of nowhere that old asshole spit that big drink of water he had taken all over my poor elderly grandmother. The monkey smiled a big yellow toothed smile, and laughed to himself. I'm certain I fell over from laughing so hard. But poor Grandma, she was mortified.

She marched straight over to the visitor's center and told the receptionist all about the monkey's awful behavior. Of course everyone in the office found the incident to be hilarious, but still, Grandma was not amused.

Later that day when my mom came to pick me up after work, Grandma told Mom what had happened. I distinctly remember Mom stifling her laughter as my distraught grandmother shuddered and said "And, oh, he smiled with those big yellow teeth!"

I will never forget that last trip to the animal farm, and I will never forget the look on my grandmother's face as that monkey spit all over her!

30 Days of Gratefulness: Day Five.

Well hello there dear readers! We are nearing the end of the first week of this challenge. What does everyone think thus far? Are you enjoying what I have to say? Are you inspired to write about what you are grateful for? Have the prompts been thought provoking for you? I didn't have any lofty goals of inspiring others with this. But if you are feeling the urge to write, DO IT! Share it with me! I would love to see what you've got to say! 

I want to take minute to say thank you for all the views and feedback I've gotten. I am always surprised at the amount of people who take time out of their busy day to read a piddly little blog that I put together. And not to brag, but it really is a lot of people. So yeah, thanks for reading, sharing, and liking!

Day five is about sounds. Like what specific sound you are grateful for. Can I just say music and use that as a blanket term for the vibrations that our ears sense? Is that cool with everyone? Yes? Okay, good.

So, music. Everyone I have ever met in my short little lifetime has been closely tethered to music in one way or another, whether they realize it or not. For me, music has always played a large part in my creative process. When I started writing I was an angst filled 13 year old who was fueled by tunes by bands like Good Charlotte and Evanescene. While I have since grown up and lost the majority of my moody sadness, I am still continually inspired by lyrics and melodies. Specifically a group called Purity Ring. If I want to write I just hop on YouTube and listen to a mix of their work and the words almost visably flow out of my fingers. It's like magic. Music has that power over pretty much everyone. It is as if music is the audible version of emotions and thoughts intensified by like a million. I'm sure there is some scientific mumbo jumbo behind why songs have such a great impact on humans, but I don't know it so I'm not going to cite it here. 

Moving right along, let's delve deeper into why I am so grateful for melodic noise. It brings people together, much like food. Little known fact: I love to sing and when I was in high school, I desperately wanted to be on Broadway. I was a talented dancer and my singing voice was pretty damn good. Now that I've grown up some and realized the stage would have eaten me alive, I belt out show tunes and twangy country songs at people for enjoyment. I do this so frequently that my two year old has started joining in the fun. Cameron has even been known to sing along on occasion. But he mostly waits for a Disney song to pop up. Who would have thought that the act of sliding my voice up and down the scales while speaking words has caused my little family to become closer knit? It's something we can all do and have fun at. And who doesn't love it when your family is getting along and not fighting over the Roku remote because half of you can't stand to watch another episode of Yu Gi O while the other half thinks it's the greatest show ever written?

I know you all have the same problem. Damn that Yu Gi O.

Music is also a decent sized chunk of my memory. Cameron used to call me a walking jukebox. But I'm not mentioning that here because I hold some knowledge about billboard topping hits. Instead, I am talking about my childhood and adolescence. I seem to have hazy memories of standing in my grandmother's kitchen while she cooked. She would be humming one song and then would start singing something else, probably from Elvis Presley, to herself. I always thought Grandma had a wonderful voice and looking back on those days gives me great joy now that she is gone. My mother also likes to sing. And she does it often. She used to spend countless hours in FYE combing over CDs with me. She's taken and sent me to loads of concerts. And she's given me one of her vintage tour shirts. But my favorite musical memory has less to do with music itself, and more to do with the atmosphere and the person I was with. But if it wasn't for the actual music, we would have never had this experience. My very best friend and I go to concerts together as often as life will allow, and this started sometime around our senior year of high school. One specific time she heard that Jeffree Star was playing a small local venue and that there were still tickets available. So we went and had the time of our lives. We danced, sang, touched J Star's leg, took pictures with him and another band. It was AMAZING. Since then, my friend and I have been to numerous shows together and we both cherish those memories deeply. 

I'm sure that I could continue writing about why I am so grateful for music but I'm going to leave it at this; music is at the heart of all of the important parts of my life. And without it I just wouldn't be the same Alex.