“I have your chair,” my cousin, Sylvia, told me at a recent family reunion.

My face must’ve registered confusion, so Sylvia reminded me that she’d borrowed the chair from me over 20 years ago.

At the time, Sylvia was teaching pre-kindergarten, and she said she was looking for a small chair for students who needed a little quiet time. She spotted a rocker in my living room that belonged to my then 6-year-old.

I’d gotten the chair when Nick was a toddler, and he spent many hours rocking in that chair, turning it upside-down to serve as a mountain and covering the chair in blankets to use as a fort. Now he was too big for the chair, and I knew Sylvia would take good care of it.

I told her to take the chair, but asked if I could get it back when she was finished.

She agreed, and 30 years later, Sylvia remembered her promise. The reason I was getting the chair back was because Sylvia was retiring after 30-plus years as a teacher. The teaching profession is losing one of the best educators around because Sylvia’s a born teacher who absolutely adores her students, always has a smile on her face and believes children learn best in an atmosphere of understanding and love.

For over three decades, she was an enthusiastic teacher for 4-year-olds. She sang songs with them, got on the floor and played games and taught thousands of children how to be happy and successful.

She also taught them how to be a good friend and how to manage their emotions.

One of the tools she used was the rocking chair. She transformed our plain chair by painting it grass-green and adding hand-designed iguanas and red-and-yellow snakes on the arms and back.

The chair was nicknamed the “peace chair” or, as Sylvia laughed, the “place-to-get-your-stuff-together” chair. When youngsters needed time to calm down, she gently guided them to the chair, and told them to spend some time thinking and rocking.

And rock they did. The paint on the sides of the arms is worn away from little fingers holding on tight to the arms as they rocked.

“They’d rock like maniacs in that chair,” Sylvia said with a laugh, and she said it wasn’t unusual to find a child wrapped up in his or her favorite blanket, rocking away until they felt safe and secure again.

I’m so happy that chair provided comfort to so many youngsters, because that’s what a rocking chair is all about. A rocking chair is also the best place for a parent to snuggle up with a colicky baby or calm down a screaming toddler.

No matter our age, we can sit in a rocking chair and rock away our problems and worries. It doesn’t matter if the chair’s padded and located in the living room or it’s an old wooden chair on the back porch.

I brought the chair home, and our grandchildren came for a visit the next day. The minute our 2-year-old grandson saw the chair, he said “mine,” and sat right down. With his little fingers, he traced the colorful snake design on the arm of the chair and then settled in with his favorite stuffed animal.

Something tells me that little green chair will always be needed, whether it’s in a living room or a classroom. And a child will know that if they need to get their “stuff together,” nothing beats that back-and-forth rhythm that only a well-loved rocking chair that’s just the right size can provide.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.