Mary Alice and The Man Who Made Rocking Chairs: A Love Story

The man who made rocking chairs made his rounds each second week of June, arriving in a dusty old Chevy and pulling a horse trailer. He carried a small notebook for order taking and a portfolio of sorts, a looseleaf plastic binder with drawings of rocking chairs. The finished products were carefully packed in the trailer, coverered with sheets and wrapped in straw and these he delivered first, unpacking each one alone and almost reverently. No ordinary chairs these - each was crafted by hand from start to finish, grooved and and pegged to fit together with perfect symetry and harmony - carved, sanded, polished and painted over the long winters, each shone with craftmanship and pride. The man who made rocking chairs was likened to an artist, known for his work and reputed to be a perfectionist of the highest degree, refusing to accept the most minor flaw in wood, working alone and until all hours, turning out treasures for front porches and kitchens and the rooms of newborns.

Mary Alice, a wood nymph of a girl who loved to draw and paint and wander the backwoods with a sketchbook and a pocketful of charcoal pencils, much loved and not at all understood by her practical and hardworking parents, thought to be shy and even distant and not much of a prospect, fell in love at first sight - first with the rocking chairs and then with the man who made them. She was a delicate, withdrawn, head in the clouds seventeen and he was an already gray at the temples, man of few words forty-one and there opposition to the match from every corner, dismal predictions of failure were heard all over the island and the phrase "cradle robber" became popular.
Nevertheless, when the man who made rocking chairs had finished his deliveries and order taking, he moved on with Mary Alice at his side in the old Chevy. They arrived on the South Shore and were married that very day, taking up residence in the second story apartment above the rocking chair workshop and immediately beginning to plan for a house overlooking the bay.

Public opinion was discreetly against them from the start, saying quietly that a marriage made of instant faith and recklessness could not survive, that love at first sight would wither with the first winter or the first hardship. They said it quietly for years, predicting that it was just a matter of time, that May - December marriages burned hotly then burned out. And through it all, Mary Alice and the man who made rocking chairs made a life together, built a house, worked and traveled together so that they would not be apart, and stayed in love. They listened only to each other and their hearts and forty years passed in the blink of an eye.

Mary Alice buried the man who made rocking chairs in the small South Shore cemetery on a bright sunny day in June, just before she packed up the latest horse trailer and the latest Chevy and began his last round of deliveries.
At summer's end, she returned to the house above the bay and to the pair of rocking chairs on the front porch, to watch sunsets alone, to smile at those who passed by, and to rock gently and wait.