The End of a Childhood Friend

I lost a good friend recently - an old oak tree that was one of two that held up an iron bar, a set of rings, from which ropes hung that held a wooden seat. My grandfather put it up over a century ago. My mother and her siblings, my sisters and I and my nieces, nephews, and my children all swung on it.

But a recent bad storm broke the tree in half, at the point where the tree had grown around the iron bar many, many years ago. Slowly but surely, my childhood home is going back to nature.

The acorns, the oak leaves I collected and preserved in wax paper with an iron. The red squirrels that made it their home and ran through the branches chattering and chasing one another. I didn't even hear any squirrels or even birdsong in the little woods north of the old home I grew up in.

I feel incredibly sad but realize this is how things are, always have been, and always will be. Change is the only constant...