“Waaaahhhh!” The baby’s cry broke the calming effects of the rain on the window. Susan had just began to feel herself drift into the place between dreams and reality, hoping to grab a few precious moments of sleep. She picked herself up from her mother’s old rocking chair and went over to the crib to pick the small baby David. From the look of it, David had been tossing and turning all through the night, trying to tire himself out and go to sleep.

Susan got married one year ago to a lawyer named Darrin. He was a good man, but whenever he found a case that really pushed him, he stayed and worked late. She really could have used a break from the baby and slept in her own bed, but that was not to be.

And finally out of exhaustion of trying to go to sleep he cried out to his mother as though she could put his terrible dreams to rest.

As Susan picked up and carried David over to the rocking chair, she was reminded of her own mother and all of the children that she had. Susan was the youngest of six and the only girl. Though she was recently married her mother never got to see Susan’s wedding. Susan’s mother died three weeks before the wedding and nine months before David was born. During the time of the pregnancy, she wished that she could have sought after her mother’s sagely advice and comfort. It had seemed the time with her mother would have lasted a bit longer, but her death hit Susan the hardest.

Her brothers mourned, but as they had families of their own to go back to they eventually moved on. Her father was another story, he had slipped back into old ways, drinking and smoking during the night and sleeping all day. Her mother had once said that she had changed her father for the better before they had children. Now that she was gone it was like his chains of restrictions were gone. Any way that Susan looked at it, her father was of no help at all.

As she sat down in the rocking chair, she lay David across her chest in a manner that he could hear her heartbeat and fall asleep. His movement became still and he relaxed on her chest. David was only three weeks old and already Susan was miffed. She had gone to see a counselor at her husband’s insistence. The counselor had said that all women go through a stage of regret when the first baby arrives. She just couldn’t bear the thought of giving up when she had barely tried.

Susan wished with all her heart that she could have asked her mother for some help, at least with some of the baby sitting matters. Her brothers all had their own families to look after. And most of her friends were still living the high life of being single. They would visit her on occasion, but they seemed to refuse to touch the baby.

They rain had stopped. David breathed a sigh of relief Susan walked back over to the crib and laid him back down in it.

Susan went back to the rocking chair and quietly sat down in it. She felt the soft, worn padding encompass her body. She rocked quietly in the chair for a few minutes. The water from the gutters outside the house continued to drain the recent water. The clouds still hung in the air as if trying to rain again. She continued to rock in the chair, her eyelids half open. She was listening to her baby breathe and it relaxed her. Her hands flitted to the cushions on the armrests. Underneath the chair she felt something that she did not know was there.

There under the arm rest was a pattern of scratches that felt like letters. The curiosity of a new finding was one that intrigued her so. Very quietly and gently she got down on her knees to look at the armrest.

There, scratched into the wood of the old chair was written the initials of all five of her brothers as well as herself. Some of the scratches looked to be as old as the chair, while the others looked to be equal to the age of the siblings that they belonged to.

The rocking chair was the only thing that Susan received from her mother’s funeral. At the time she thought that it was such a silly gift, but as time grew the parent further from the child, she seemed to latch onto the chair more closely than ever.

In some sort of way the chair seemed to be telling her that she would be alright. If the chair could survive the six children before David then perhaps, she could survive as well and go on to flourish to maybe another child.

The front door open from downstairs, Susan got up and went to see Darrin, as that is who most assuredly it was. And in leaving the nursery, she looked back to the crib to see that David slept soundly. She left the door cracked enough for light to filter into the room, and went with new hope in her heart to see her husband.