Rocking Chair Traditions

I am sitting on my grandparents’ porch, in the rocking chairs that had been passed down for generations. The armrests had been worn down by deep conversations over whiskey and cigarettes. Those were the not so old habits my grandfather warned me about. My eyes traced through the jagged grain of the wood, up and down the lines dating it back. The wood had been smoothed by the passing years, like running water through the Grand Canyon. I splinter my fingers by picking at the wood. I would much rather have to spend hours picking wood chips from under my nails than to look at him. I know that he will be staring down at me with deep brown eyes, soiled with ruined emotion: the eyes he handed down to me. So I just don’t look up. I am wearing my grandfather's worn-down jean-jacket with frayed ends, and it smells distinctly of the cologne he gave me. My father hates this cologne, he says it's too strong and too boyish for me, so I wear it every day with contempt. 

We are continuing the tradition of the rocking chairs, though without the whiskey and cigarettes. That was lost to my dad’s generation. He clears his voice, forcing me to drag my eyes from my wood-filled fingers to meet his. 

“Are we going to talk?” he said. He was making his voice deeper than it normally was. This was his usual intimidation tactic, though there was nothing to interrogate out of me this time.

I looked back down at the wooden rocking chair. Maybe if he drank whiskey and smoked cigarettes just like his father, then he would be less mean. 

“I don’t want to stay here,” I say as I lift my head up to look around. My grandparents have a big yard with unruly grass my uncle forgot to cut this week, wilted flowers, and a tree half dead after being struck by lightning. I was glad when that tree got charred black in a thunderstorm. I’ve resented it since I fell from it. But having the wind knocked out of me as my back hit the ground was really the only way to taste fresh air. Trees half dead and grass too alive hold memories but not good ones. There is nothing here worthy of a lifetime. “I don’t want to stay here.” I say it softer this time.

“Why not?” He raises his hands up like he is toasting for a celebration, but his brow is furrowed more than it should be. He motions to things I already know are there. 

“Mississippi is damn good at making you realize that you don’t want to stay here, and that’s about all it’s good for,” I say back. I’ve never cussed in front of him before and I can’t tell if me doing it now makes him angry or sad. His face is just all twisted together and mangled with illegible emotion. I cross my arms over each other, and the buttons of my too-big jacket start rattling. The only thing I want to keep from Mississippi is this smoke stained jean-jacket, dotted with my grandfather's sins. I am fine to leave all else I have because it is all filthy and ugly love, nasty and rotten. But I can't tell my father that. 

He ignores the cuss word, but I can hear something rising in his voice. Maybe it is anger or maybe it is regret. “What happened to loving lake trips to watch the sunrise? What happened to that?” 

My grandfather would take me to the lake early Saturday morning to fish. The night before would still be lingering in the sky when we got there. Every time, I would lay flat against the grass and feel cold dew drops seeping into my shirt as I watched the moon fade away into the ombré of pink and orange clouds. My grandfather would say the same thing every time: “Girl, sit up before the catfish get tired of waiting for you.” He would smile and pull out the share-size bag of skittles we got on the way there. But I don’t go fishing anymore and I rarely eat skittles. The gas station we used to go to was reopened under a new name a while ago. 

“I haven’t spent a Saturday like that in a long time.” I stuck my arms out and the buttons on my jacket rattled. “I have enough of him to take with me wherever I go.” Truth be told, I had more hand-me-downs from my grandfather than his jacket and cologne. I had picked out pieces of him to weave into myself. I picked up his guitar, his button-down shirts and the keys to the Mustang he wanted to be buried with. 

“What happened to my little girl?” There is more regret peeking through his voice than anger now. His face is familiar, but it shows a raw and feral emotion I have never seen before. That is the face he passed down to me. I know he can see himself in me as he blankly stares, waiting. I know he can see his nose, his eyes and his hair. I’ve always looked more like him than I wanted to.

We sat in silence for so long the air felt thick between us. I go back to picking at the armrests of the wooden rocking chair. I’m tired of rocking chair traditions. 

“You can’t change that you’re from Mississippi. It’s in your voice and it’s in your personality. A part of you will always be here.” The anger is making its appearance now.

“I’ll find a new place to be from.” I get up to leave knowing that I’ll have to spend the hours I dared myself picking wood chips from my nail beds. Maybe this is the aspect of rocking chair traditions I’ll leave behind, that of broken nails and splintered skin. I don’t look back as I tiptoe down dry rotted steps. I don’t want to look him in his eyes again. He doesn’t understand how me and him are the same, both different from our fathers.

His hands don’t cradle alcohol the way his father did, his lips don’t long for the kiss of cigarette smoke. He doesn’t crave the sickening smell and yellow stains of death the way I don’t crave staying here with half dead trees and wooden rocking chairs. He doesn’t understand that maybe some things just aren’t hereditary.