Breathing life into it with my memories – Welcome to 2019!

Before

After

This was an old rocking chair from Srilanka, that was sitting around at my parents’ place. I took it from them a few years ago saving it before it hit the rubbish tip.

It also stayed with me neglected even outside for a year. Facing the brunt of the weather, fading away. Still I couldn’t give it up. My husband gave me ultimatums each year to fix it or lose it.

I held onto it, half knowingly and unknowingly of memories from my childhood.

It reminded me of Srilanka? Yes and No, more it reminded me of life once lived, embedded in my brain as feelings. Those of contenment, love and joy. Its only in digging further while coming up with justifications for my husband on why I am keeping this old chair, I remembered the golden evenings with the sun setting on the verandah, when we were all together, my grandfather sleeping in a wooden chair called “easy chair”with similar thatch work as this one. The simple life before the civil war. We weren’t rich nor poor, the land and community provided enough that there was rarely memories of wanting more. My dad was a Vet and often rendered his services to the people in the village free of charge. They in return paid him with what they can from their harvest, or with other commodities from their land and what their animals produced like milk, egg.

I even remembered the Thatch workers, who went from village to village to rethatch and repairing old furnitures. I remembered them coming to our place.

In the end I realised, this chair held a connection to my childhood and my grandfather. That was what missing all these years while I held on to this weathered, lifeless rocking chair.

So finally I did somerhing about it and breathed life into this beautiful furniture with my memories.