Freshly trod upon by the man I thought was The One, I got in the car and headed for a picturesque town known for its abundance of antiques shops. Objective: do serious damage to my finances. Brokenhearted men exercise like demons and immerse themselves in work. Brokenhearted women exercise like demons and buy things they don`t need. So it goes.
I drove slowly down a shady avenue and spotted a hand-lettered poster:
ANTIQUES. There was a huge metal sign from a circa 1940 Gulf station sitting in front of a ramshackle bungalow. The porch moaned, the screen door complained. Inside the sweltering house were stacks of awful old paintings. Nothing for me, I thought. A man appeared amid the peeling portraits.
”Got any furniture?” I asked.
”Not really. What are you looking for?”
”A rocking chair,” I said, actually looking only for some way to get That Man off my mind. And I didn`t want anything that needed work. The antiques dealer led me to the porch and pointed at something perched atop another pile of awful paintings. It was the World`s Most Hideous Rocking Chair.
He set the shiny black thing on the walk. I looked at it, it looked at me. I sat down. The curved splat followed the contour of my back perfectly. I studied the chair again. It was solid, and I knew from its construction, grace and simplicity that it was very old. In spots where the paint had bubbled off, I could see red stain. No telling what was under all that crud.
”How much?” It was ugly and needed work. I had to have it. So much for my resolution to avoid work.
”Seventy-five.”
It was the find of the century or the waste of a good check. I drove home grinning because I had the World`s Most Hideous Rocking Chair in the back seat.
The carport became a workshop. After dousing myself with bug repellent, I doused the WMHRC with semi-paste paint stripper and attacked it with a scraper and steel wool. The man next door came over to watch.
”You like doing that? Why?” asked my neighbor, whose hearing is a bit weak.
”Broken heart,” I mumbled. ”Trying to fix it.”
”Broken arm, yeah. Better get that chair`s arm fixed.”
I laughed and smacked a mosquito, smearing my bare leg with toxic crud. My neighbor doesn`t understand the appeal of working on furniture. Restoring an antique is like nurturing a relationship-it`s a labor of love that often involves more labor than love.
An exhilarating sense of control consumes me as the chair is transformed. Each weekend I lose myself in happy monotony, sanding the seat, back, runners. I`ll fill the cracks with wood putty and try bleaching the dark water marks. With some rich brown stain, my old rocker will be a beauty. It will provide lots of comfort and solace, too. Rocking chairs are good for that.
The evening crickets roar with optimism.
