Not far from the tree

I was out on the back porch yesterday and thought the chipmunks or squirrels were up to their usual hijinks. But the plunking noises I heard of compact missiles hitting the roof and sides of the house had nothing to do with them, it was the  annual fall “fall” of acorns.

James always said you knew when summer was coming to a close when the first acorn dropped. He was right. He was full of such small nuts of folklore and information he carried down from his parents and I assume, they from theirs. We always viewed the rain of acorns as a nuisance. They covered our flagstone patio, crunched under our shoes, and the greedy  chipmunks liked to crack them open against the hard surfaces of my lawn furniture, leaving the ravaged shells behind for me to clean up like a party held by so many bratty children.

When James died unexpectantly I had a lot of decisions to make on the fly. One was whether to bury him or have him cremated. I seemed to remember we had talked about cremation at one point so that was the route I took. I also had to go into the funeral home showroom
(macabre) and pick a container to hold some of his ashes for me to keep.  It was ghastly. So many shiny small urns, different colors, different shapes, some with sports insignias – I kid you not.  I was drawn to a small wooden container in the shape of an acorn. It seemed the least offensive and most natural. I did not remember at the time his folksy comments about the advent of fall, but maybe it was in the back of my mind. That was the one I chose.

If you have read previous posts, you would also know that James had many kooky collections. One was small wooden boxes. He did not keep anything in them, he just liked the boxes. Some time after his death, I was wandering around the living room aimlessly and stopped at one of the boxes in his collections. It was a small round, semi-ornate box.  I picked it up. Something rattled inside. That was strange. I knew they were empty.  I opened the box – an acorn.