I am sitting in a rocking chair. The day is coming to an end. I need to go in the house and cook some supper, but I don’t feel like it right now.

There’s a little color on the horizon that I can see through the trees from my shop. The roll-up door is open. The air is warm for February. The smell of sawn wood is still with me.

My grandfather comes to mind. He ran a sawmill on the farm where I grew up in Henry County. He built things from the lumber he cut. He would be familiar with the aroma of my shop.

Paul Kimball Chappell was born two days later than me in the month of October 1886. He would be an astounding 138 years old if he was still living. He passed on from this world in May of 1951 before I was born, and in my 68th year, I am now nearly 4 years older than he lived to become.

It’s funny. I never knew the man, but I feel connected to him. My best picture of him shows him at around 11 years old. It’s the typical family photo of that era where everyone wears black, and they all look like they just ate a bad batch of chittl’ns. It was taken maybe 1898. My Aunt Annie named everyone in the photo for me years ago. Walkers and Chappells.

I have two other pictures of D’daddy, as my cousins call him. One is of him and Manny, my grandmother, standing in the yard in front of the house. I assume the one that burned down in the fall of ’53. But the background is too blurry to tell much. The other is of them both standing at the rear of a what might be a late ‘30s Ford. The gloss finish is cracked like a broken mirror. I think it’s the front yard where I grew up. My cousin Wesley’s little-boy-face is in the frame at the bottom.

I am telling you this simply because I am reminiscing through the pages of my life. Reminiscing always includes the people who were of some significant importance.

Like my mama. Coming up in a few days, she would be 100 years old if she were still living. It’s remarkable to think about what passes over a century’s time. How so many things change. How much I change. Dad would be 101 this coming summer.

I think about the fact that neither one of them ever met any of their great-grandchildren. They were gone before any of them ever came along.

To my grandchildren, my folks are just unfamiliar names. Pictures on the wall that have no memory. There’s no voice, no smell, no blurry images, no specific place in time for my G-kids that connect them to the things that are so familiar to me.

It has to be amazing to become a great-grandparent. If I make it, I might see a GG-kid one of these days. I’ll sure enough be old, so I doubt I’ll get to see him/her learn to tie a shoelace, but maybe I’ll hold one for a moment.

I think what’s really happening, as I reminisce, is that I am having a conversation with my ancestors. Don’t call the hospital just yet. I’m not seeing things. I’m not hearing voices. I’m just aware of a presence, or maybe I should say I’m just wishing I could talk to them. I wish I knew what they thought about things. Just simple things.

If Dad was sitting in the other rocking chair, we be catching up. Only 20 years ago, when I would go home to visit, sometimes we’d sit in the chairs out in the shade under the pecan trees in the back yard. We’d talk about work, kids, how Beth was doing. He’d tell me what my sister was up to. He’d always ask about the tree farm.

We’d have a lot to talk about this evening. We’d talk about Marian, my sister, who passed away a year ago, now. We’d talk about my kids, weddings that he missed. He’d want to make sure they’re doing okay. He’d like my son’s new job. We’d talk about Beth being gone and me finding new love and how complicated it is to navigate all that, but how wonderful it is to find it.

But in my shop, if my dad and D’daddy were here, we’d mostly just be talking shop.

I imagine D’daddy would be looking over the rough sawn pine I put on the walls. He cut a lot of it in his time. He’d be pointing out the grain patterns and saw marks. Which boards are loblolly pine, and which are slash pine. Interesting knots. Dark wounds in the wood from old forest fires.

He’d rub a thick hand over the surface and say something like, “They let the blade get outta balance on this board. Bet they had to swap it out.”

Of course, I have no idea what his voice would sound like.

I’m working on the math. My dad was just 27 when D’daddy died. That’s awfully young to lose a father. I can only imagine all the times Dad had imaginary conversations with him. All the advice he would have wanted. The approval he would have sought.

I can recall rabbit hunting down around Hawkinsville about 1970. A cold day. Frost over the cut cornfield. The beagles working a trail. We’re standing together to take a breather. Dad pulls an apple from the pocket of his hunting jacket and peels off the skin with his pocketknife in a long twirl.

He doesn’t say it directly to me, but he says it out loud, like he was thinking about it and couldn’t keep the words inside, “Papa would have loved a day like this.” And then as if to reassure himself, “Yes sir, I’m sure he’d be right here with us if he could.” His eyes looking away to another place in time.

I closed up the shop and went inside to make some supper. My son got home from Tifton after I’d finished eating, but I left the food on the stove. Cubed steak, breaded and fried with biscuits. He made a plate and we visited.

Around 9pm, after we cleaned up the kitchen, I went back out to my shop. This was my silent invitation for Marshall to come out so I could show him the progress. As I expected, he followed.

He liked what I was doing. We talked about things not yet built. Shelves. Stairs. Storage. Benches. “Well, if you do that, you could also add this.” Followed by, “What if you move the door down and start your staircase here.?” Punctuated by, “I like that idea.”

A silence fell on us. I guess we had used up our allotment of words.

I looked around. I thought it first and then I said it out loud. My rocking chair thoughts had returned.

“I sure wish Dad could see this. I wonder what he’d think about it all?”

And then, as if to reassure myself, I added.

“I bet he’d like it.”