Porch Rocking Lullabye to Sleep

I cannot tell you when the last time I rocked myself to sleep.

I do remember the smell of Alabama summer thunderstorms–ozone, Zoyzia grass and wet sidewalks,  the faint hint of sulfur if Jackson Steel was pouring out on first avenue. Summer storms after dinner, four of us on the “glider”–a metal seat on metal straps hung from a frame.

In the same exact point of the arc of swing, a clunk here, a faint squeak there, time after time after time. The back and forth, the warm laps, the soft summer night–how could two small boys have stayed awake?

We must have been about 4 and 2, him headed north, me south; his head in momma’s lap, mine in Granny Bea’s. Lightning far off, no thunder; lightning bugs blink faintly yellow-green in the dark on the metal screen, squeak-clunk-pause, squeak-clunk-pause. And I was rocked gently off to sleep already in my jammies.

We have a porch swing for less than a week now. Better than that, a friend made it and helped me hang it. And he wood-burned a remarkable image of our house into the back of it.

Come back tomorrow, I’ll show and tell. But tonight, I’m going out to listen from the porch swing to the shush of the creek, the whirr of crickets, and the sound that the silver chains make, back and forth, back and forth, back and…