They day I remembered the stone

"This one!", I cried, beaming with joy. I held it out for him to see. He studied it, with mounting interest. He usually didn't let on, but I could sense his curiosity this time. A few moments of silence passed, while we both stared at the rock in the palm of my hand. Then the obvious follow-up question from my father arrived;

"What do you mean you remember it?".

He looked around, somewhat bewildered, clearly trying to remember if he had ever been here before. I don't know if he had. I don't remember him ever being outside the house, besides going to and from the car. He wasn't excactly what you'd call an outside man. But then again, the woods didn't offer much to go outside for. Dense and thick, with who knows how many creepy-crawlies and rodents scouring the ground. All the more weird that he and I were out there that day.

"I've seen it before. I've seen it many times before"

It wasn't a lie. I was sure I had seen it before. I couldn't tell him where or in what context. But I knew that stone in my heart.

Dad seemed to accept this, albeit reluctantly. I could tell from his frown, that he wasn't quite sure what to make of it all. His son, remembering stones in the middle of the woods. It made no sense. No sense at all. He hadn't got the faintest idea about the origins of that stone. Looked like a regular old stone, akin to the hundreds of similar stones scattered in the near vicinity. Why that stone. And why his son.

I wasn't sure about the stone either, but I know it had to be the same stone, and that I felt a weird joy in having found it. Kind of like the same joy you feel when you meet an old friend after years of being apart. A friend you liked when you used to know each other, but just didn't have a chance to get better acquianted with. Obviously, I didn't draw that parallel at the time, being only 7, I had no idea of the feeling induced in me, when meeting old friends. But later on in life, when looking back, I realized it was that exact feeling.

"Come on, we need to move", dad said. He startled me out of my unbridled enthusiasm induced stasis, idly staring the rock. It fascinated me to no end. But he was right. We needed to move. What were we doing out there? It eludes me to this day. I clenched the rock in my fist, and paused only another moment, before I grabbed my dad's hand in my other fist, and let him drag me off.

Picture unrelated

Decades later, now a grown man, I returned to the house of my childhood. I brought along with me, my only son. The house was in a state of decay. My parents had moved out years earlier, and the tenants who bought the house from them, had died shortly after. With nobody else to look after the house, nature slowly did it's thing. The woods surrounding the house was slowly assimilating it into the density. Scary business, if you stopped and thought about it. Thankfully, none of us did.

I wanted to show my son the house I grew up in, which is why we were there to begin with. He suggested a walk in the backcountry, which I found odd, since he's never been much of a naturist. But I guess, since we were there anyway, he figred why not do something so as to not waste the long drive. We couldn't have walked far, before I heard him say the words, that instantly transported my mind back 30 odd years. I was trying to watch the pattern of flight, of a small bird circling the low branches, when my attention was fiercely yanked away by the shrill voice of my young son, when he exclaimed;

"I remember this stone!"