1 Down 1 Across

1 Down 1 Across

The answer was rocking chair.

^{It was a Saturday, about half past noon, or maybe a couple of hours before dinnertime. Somewhere along the middle of the Saturday afternoon, our family would settle into the living room. Dad would get into his overstuffed armchair, put his feet up on the hassock, and do what he called a “light check.” You know, just to make sure there was no light leaking around the eyelids. My brothers would be sprawled out on the floor with a stack of well-used comic books between them. Every once in a while, one brother would shove one of the magazines over to the other one, and they would quietly laugh or chuckle or gasp in amazement. I usually preferred sitting on the floor with my back against the couch, a cat in my lap, and a book that I was thoroughly, absolutely involved in reading.}

^{Near the window, my mother sat in a rocking chair. A huge wooden rocking chair. It was so big that Mom and I could pretty much sit in it side by side. That rocking chair had been a part of the family long before I came around. Long before Mom came around. It had been handed down through the generations. It was huge, but it was comfortable.}

^{So Mom would be sitting there in the rocking chair near the window so she could have good light. Off to one side of her, on a small table, would be the Oxford Dictionary, usually open. Mom would be sitting in that rocking chair, slowly going back and forth... back and forth... long, slow glides as Mama looked at what was in her lap. On a very sturdy book in my mama’s lap there was the folded Saturday section of The New York Times. It was folded specifically to display the crossword.}

^{My mama was a crossword fiend. She really loved the Saturday puzzle because it was the most difficult one of the whole week. A lot of people have heard about the Sunday New York Times crossword. It’s huge. I mean, it’s big. It takes up almost a whole top section of a page. It was fun to do, but it tended to be fairly easy.}

^{My mama wanted a challenge. So the Saturday edition had the most difficult puzzle of the whole week. There Mom sat, rocking back and forth and back and forth. You could see the concentration on her face. You could see her pen tapping on the paper as she thought through the answers.}

^{Now, it’s important that you notice that my mother was using a ballpoint pen. My mother did not believe in using pencils because she felt you should have the answer correct before you put it down. In all those little blocks—you know, you start at square one, one across or one down—and you put your answer in ink. That was my mama’s challenge.}

^{Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes Mom didn’t have the right answer. So she would very carefully put an X through the wrong letter. Then, over where you have the definitions—you know, one down would say “doorway”—she would write beside that one the correct answer.}

^{She would sit there and rock back and forth. It was lovely to see her just doing something for herself. She knew that coming up was a light Saturday supper. The next day being Sunday, Mother always made a big Sunday dinner after church, and she often started part of the Sunday dinner after the Saturday dinner.}

^{So this hour or so was my mother’s time to rock back and forth... think about answers. Sometimes she would gently call out and say, “Nine down is eluding me, but I’m working on it.” And we would all go, “Yeah, Mom, we hear you.”}

^{And then it would all get silent again. My brothers giggling a little bit over the comic books, Dad still quietly taking a nap, and me and the cat buried in my book.}

^{Sometimes Mom’s rocking stopped—not because she needed to stop the motion to fill in a square. The motion would stop because she was remembering. Sometimes she would very briefly speak of the memory that came forth—of being a child in her mother’s arms, sitting in that rocking chair... or seeing her grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, in that same rocking chair, tears running down her face across the family Bible as she made the entry of the death of another family member.}

^{That rocking chair had rocked many generations. Good times rocking. Sad times rocking. I had rocked my youngest brother when he was just a day or so old in that rocking chair. It was so big I had to stretch my foot way down just to get a tippy toe on the floor to push that rocking chair... to give him a moment or two of peace.}

^{That rocking chair brings me some of my most vivid memories of my mother. My mother couldn’t hear it creak for the longest time. My mother was deaf and didn’t get any hearing back until I was past twelve years of age. Then a wonderful surgery gave her some hearing back again.}

^{So all of us in the room could hear that...}

^{Creak... creak... creak... creak...}

^{Swish... swish... swish... swish...}

^Halt.

^{Mama saying quietly, “The answer to twenty-six down. Let’s see... twenty-six down... ah... the answer is residence.”}

^{She would write it in. The chair would begin to rock again. Saturday afternoon eased into Sunday.}

^{There was that time from Saturday afternoon to Sunday... almost a dreamlike quality. A transition. Kind of like that rocking chair transitioned many generations of my family. And my mother, enjoying her Saturday New York Times puzzle.}

^{When she would get all finished, she’d get up and go over and nudge Daddy slightly awake and say,}

^{“I have finished it.”}

^{He would reach up and pull her down to him, and the two of them would sit there in that lounge chair, being quiet... waiting for the transition from Saturday into Sunday morning.}

^{Thank you for coming through the open door.}

^{Have a very blessed day.}