Rockers, porch swings, DVDs anf the wounded feminine

Today, rockers, porch swings,  DVDs and the wounded feminine!

In my rounds at a retirement community, I  entered the room of a 90 year old woman who was attempting to play  a DVD of Tony Bennett. She held three remotes in her arthritic hands as she laughed at what she termed  her" lack of a male technical  brain ". Then she laughed again noting,"I really wouldn't want a  male brain---except for things such as this!"

 Somehow her DVD dilemma precipitated her reminiscing about easier summer memories filled with porch swings and rockers. She loved the porch swing of her old house where she raised her children.  There were  quiet moments and playful times when the  children used blankets to cover  the swings and imagine whatever adventure beckoned.

I remember rockers too.My grandmother would rock my  baby cousins and croon  a deep and rhythmic "Aaaah,Aaaah,Aaaah,Ah". Surely this was a  primal Polish rendition  of  the heartbeat.  I witnessed  this and was delighted, even as a little 5 year old , of what I saw and felt.

But then my uncle, who by that time, owned the family home of my grandparents, decided to modernize.In addition to destroying the Victorian pocket doors, he   replaced the  wooden porch  with cement and  removed the rockers.When the cement dried, hard wicker bucket chairs with spindly metal legs  with scrape-y feet appeared. ...even Harlow's monkeys would have been distressed. No more was my grandmother able to rock babies gently, quietly,  soothingly.

To me , this modernization happening in Madmen times was a sign of the negative masculine ushering in "progress" while denigrating feminine feeling so necessary to nurturing life.Yes, my uncle was a good man of his time, nevertheless, on  this, he cowed to his  masculine energy at the cost of the mothering feminine.

Now neuroscience- the logic of it all- would  favor the rockers, and my grandmother's  soothing sounds and  cuddling would be considered as what is best for brain development.What my grandmother intuited is being corroborated by science. Here it would seem, the Logos(masculine) of science confirms the  importance of the Feminine principle. Grandmom, you rock!