I run my hand over the shiny rim of the baby cradle. The sun reflects of the gleaming stain over most of it, though right here, near the head, the railing dips. Only a millimeters, but here the stain is worn off, no longer holding it’s sine.
“I thought about re-staining it,” my father says, his sun-kissed face folding there spots on his cheeks, his eyes narrowing into four-toed crow’s feet as he smiles.
“But that’s where they all touched to check on their baby.”
Always a bit of a sentimentalist, though you wouldn’t know it from his burly shoulders that can still carry heavier weights than his younger workers at age sixty-five, my father nodded.
Upstairs now, placed next to my side of the bed, it’s evening and I can’t stop staring at the cradle. Crafted by hand by my great-great-grandfather for the daughter he adored who he thought stolen by a man who cared only to have her as what we would call a ‘trophy wife’. Family legend has it that my great-grandmother kept the cradle, but the one who used it was her beloved servant when she became pregnant. My grandma was raised from her gilded cradle alongside this son of the servant.
The son of a servant whose head graced this cradle, and twenty-five years later impregnated my grandma. With indignation and a shot gun, they were rushed to a small chapel in the city to be joined in matrimony before anyone could find out. War, along with a timely donation to the local paper, helped moved the story of the quick marriage through the society pages faster than the news cycle passes through int here modern times.
Leaning over my engorge belly, I lifted the new mattress into the cradle, the measurements perfect, a sign some things don’t change even through the generations. I fitted the sheets snuggly onto the mattress, then decorated it with soft stuffed animals, an embroidered pillow and a mobile of jungle animals. Most of the items would be taken out once my son was born. I’d read enough parenting articles to know that.
Next to my bedside I picked up the picture of my grandmother holding my father next to the cradle. My grandfather and her married while he was in the Army during the Korean War. Though his family accepted her quickly, they couldn’t come back to his hometown due to anti-miscegenation laws. They settled in Washington State, and his parents followed quickly after.
My father slept here along with his two sisters and now, being the oldest of my generation of children, I would place my newborn here. The strength fo a cradle proof of the bond of love.