I do not sit in my Nana’s rocking chair.

This is strange because it is probably the sturdiest chair in the house.

The original cushion is gone now, replaced long ago by another. One small nail occasionally reminds the unwary that time has passed. A blanket rests across the seat, less for decoration than protection. Reusable grocery bags sometimes hang from the back.

It remains, in every practical sense, a chair.

And yet, I rarely think of it as one.

My Nana was born in 1898.

I remember the rocking chair from her house when I was a very small child. It was simply there, in the same way certain trees, certain hills, and certain people simply exist in the landscape of childhood. You do not imagine their beginnings because you have never known a world without them.

After she entered a nursing home, and later passed away, the chair was one of the things that stayed with me.

Somehow, it has survived every move.

Every good season.

Every difficult one.

I have carried it farther than I ever carried the house it came from.

The curious thing is that I almost never sit in it.

I have, perhaps, sat on the edge of it once or twice since moving into this house. Not because it wouldn’t hold me. Quite the opposite. I suspect it would outlast half the furniture I currently own.

I simply do not feel the need.

Somewhere along the way, the chair stopped asking to be used and began asking only to remain.

That may sound overly sentimental about a piece of furniture.

But the chair carries histories I do not know.

Who sat in it before my first memories?

What conversations took place there?

What ordinary evenings passed unnoticed while someone rocked gently back and forth, unaware that the chair would one day outlive them all?

There are no answers to those questions.

Only the chair itself.

It sits quietly in my office beneath its blanket, still participating in everyday life without demanding attention. I pass it countless times each week without really seeing it, until suddenly I do.

And then I remember that some objects survive long enough to become more than possessions.

They become witnesses.

I wonder how many ordinary chairs are sitting in ordinary rooms, carrying stories for which there are no longer any living narrators.