Our Rocking Chair

This past week I was at a conference at a beautiful United Methodist Camp. Camp Sumatanga is situated in tall pines in North Alabama, which by the way is still too far north, it was only 35 degrees as a high all week. While at the conference there were rocking chairs in the back of the large meeting area where mothers and fathers would sit with their small children during the seminars.
I was reminded of the hours that Nancy and I had spent on our rocking chair rocking our children while feeding them a bottle right before bed time or in the middle of the night. We bought that rocker about 19 years ago, right before our first child was born. It's seen a lot of rocking time.
When I arrived home from the conference my 15 year old wanted to play "The Legend of Zelda" on his Nintendo Wii gaming counsel. He has it hooked to our big screen TV in our basement. We've found that the best way to play the game is to sit with the wireless controller about 6 feet from the screen. So we pull the rocking chair in front of the TV and whoever is playing at the time gets to sit there. So JD and I took turns.
It occured to me that, though he's not sitting on my lap as we play, that old rocking chair is still nurturing our father and son relationship.