I gently placed the pine cone in Stella’s tender hands, careful not to let its rough edges scratch her.
Stella, my two-year-old granddaughter, had spent the day after her mother’s surgery close to her, perhaps a daughterly instinct to care for her mom. But the next day, she was ready to romp with me.
We chased each other through the house, playing hide-and-seek, until, fearing we might wake her eight-month-old twin sisters, I suggested we move our game outdoors, though I knew the July heat would wilt us. Across the yard, we ran, I in pursuit of Stella—up and down her slide, pushing her back and forth on the swing set—and she, snickering, challenging me repeatedly: “Catch me, PopPop.” And so we skipped and hopped across the backyard.
I felt the sun more than she did, or so it seemed. Partly for my survival, I pretended to be a tour guide, a naturalist calling her attention to nature’s wonders hidden in Stella’s backyard. First stop: her daddy’s garden; next: a hands-on tour of the shrubs, comparing the texture of the Tiger Lily with the Milkweed.
Her two-year-old attention span dictated momentary pauses rather than restful stops. We were trekking across the yard, a few minutes here, a few there, uphill towards the wooded area, stopping at the fence row along the way. That was where I discovered the pine cone, lying there alone as if it were longing for someone to find it.
Squatting down to her eye level, cupping the pine cone as I folded my hands in hers, Stella stroked the cone’s rough edges with her fingers as I turned it over for her, allowing her to feel the texture. “It’s a pine cone,” I said, as she squinted, repeating the words after me, “Pine cone.” She studied the cone, then looked back at me with a broad smile, gratified with our discovery.
Stella raised her eyebrows as she massaged the pine cone’s gnarly texture with her smooth hands. The young child held the old pinecone in her hands, the cone’s life now spent, hardened by as many as a dozen summers and winters, come and gone, a survivor of nature’s harshness, its mission of protecting seeds done, now resting solitarily on the ground, waiting for someone, anyone—even one ignorant of its purpose and significance on God’s good earth—yes, even someone who wouldn’t appreciate it for the bitter winters or brutal summers it had endured, who would no doubt pick it up as a souvenir, a mere artifact, maybe, or toss it aside, leaving it to reunite with the soil that birthed it.
The pine cone, a noble member of the gymnosperm family whose heritage harkens to prehistoric times—now toughened and strengthened on nature’s anvil, which had hammered wrinkles of pain and anguish in it, wrapping it in a faint smell of pine—rests confident and secure in who it has become.
As my 68-year-old fingers enfold the two-year-old’s, both of us grasping the cone, I know that one day, it will be me: it will be my turn to take my place in the last cycle of life, joining the pine cone, lost in the dirt, waiting to be found, confident that the Promise of the Ages, the eternal I AM in me and There, will come again for His own.
Stella giggles and drops the pine cone, watching it fall to the ground, as I quickly retrieve it for a keepsake, joining her in a chase back to the house.
And I pretend not to catch her.
Grasping this moment for all its worth as this day stretches before us.
I run in her direction.
With the pine cone secure in my hand.