Becoming Something Different

It's a Fall day in rural Georgia. It's the late forties/early fifties. There's a small thump as an acorn plops to the ground in a shallow, damp depression in an otherwise flat field. It's nearly round and small, about a half-inch across. This acorn surely doesn't know this, but it already has a name: Quercus nigra, the water oak. And that's just what it is. A water oak acorn. And it sits on the ground, just being a water oak acorn. 

At some point, water is added to the acorn. Spring heat, too. Something happens. A tiny taproot slowly emerges from the acorn's shell and stretches downward. The root pushes its way into the soil, and soon a tiny, tender stem and leaflets emerge and begin a slow, unfurling stretch towards the sun. All of the parts of the acorn are still there, and for sure it's still itself: Quercus nigra. But even so, it is becoming something different. 

Now we call it a seedling. And it has much added to it: water, nutrients, carbon, solar radiation. And it becomes something different still. It becomes more of itself. It adds branches. It adds height. It is still fully itself. And also it is becoming something different. 

It's now the mid-nineties. A house is built in the back of the pasture, overlooking what is now a mature water oak, towering over the pasture, its round, wide crown demanding to be the focal point of anyone looking out from the house, or anyone looking towards the house from the road. It's probably 75 feet tall, and in the summertime it often hosts dozens of cows under its canopy, providing them relief from the sweltering Georgia sun. There's a boy who moves into the house. He's on the cusp of puberty, and spends a lot of time wandering outside. The boy sometimes pokes around at the tree's bark with a poorly-maintained pocketknife. This tree still very much contains everything that was once that small acorn. It's still very much itself, and yet it has become something profoundly different.

It's a Fall day in 2003. The goofy, distractible, wandering kid steers his pickup truck off the road and into the gravel driveway. He's still himself, but he has become something different. He's still goofy and distractible, but he has grown and matured. He still carries a pocketknife, but it's better maintained now, and mercifully he no longer carves in living trees. And on this day, there is something very different indeed about him. For the first time on this day, this goofy young man has a particular young woman with him. As they drive along the driveway at the edge of the pasture, she takes in the beauty of the water oak's late summer foliage. And who could blame her? The young man drives slowly as the gravel crunches under them. He keeps stealing glances at the young woman, gauging her reaction to seeing the landscape of his coming-of-age. She is pleased by it. He smiles. They are each themselves. But they are together, and even though they don't know it yet, they are in the process of becoming something different. 

It's a few years later. Spring. A different car pulls into the driveway, but it carries the very same young man and woman. They are still themselves. But different.  It's the same ingredients as before, except they've each had the addition of a band of precious metal. Some alchemy has occurred. They're each themselves, but they're also them too. It's something beautifully different. The young woman takes hundreds of photos. She takes one of the water oak. It's this picture: 

It's a few years later. Another different car. Same them. But no, not the same. They have a new person in the car. This person is made up of ingredients from each of the two young adults, but it is something different. And the them that they are is now something so much more, and so very different.

It's later that same year. The water oak, still itself, becomes something different. Its xylem and phloem quit xyling and phlowing. The moisture starts to drain and evaporate, and the branches begin to dry out. Its foliage that year is not pretty. It's different, and it's not fun. 

It's the week of Thanksgiving, 2012. The water oak's once majestic, shade-giving branches are now heavy, brittle, and dangerous. The oak needs to be cut down. The pocketknife kid, of course, ends up being the one who has to go all "Old Yeller" on the focal point of his childhood: 

The tree, that was and still is the same acorn from before, is now something different. It's a log. And so it remains for a brief while, but before long the young man's parents hire a friend with a sawmill to come. Sharpened steel teeth and powerful machinery produce long, rough-cut boards. The wood is transported to the young man's home in another state. It is stickered and stacked in the basement, where it can dry, and stabilize, and spend some time just being exactly what it is: a stack of long, organized fibers of a water oak, Quercus nigra, that sprung forth from a small round acorn. And there it stays, for more than ten years, just being what it is. 

It is 2023. June 21st. The summer solstice; the longest day of the year. The water oak is in the basement, existing. The young man enters the basement workshop, suddenly looking markedly older. He looks through the stack of Quercus nigra and picks a couple of choice boards out, then uses a handsaw to cut a couple of clear sections out. He sets these pieces carefully on his workbench, and then leaves. A few days later, he returns. He packs those sections up along with a grab bag of woodworking tools, carries them up the basement steps, and places them in the back of his car. They're on their way to becoming something different.

These select sections of that oak travel back to Georgia, back to the gravel driveway, to a workshop about 75 yards from where the acorn fell all those decades ago. There, over the course of a week, they are once more transformed. 

The young man once again puts blade to the oak. No pocketknife this time; now it's with well-honed tools and something that, if you kinda squint, resembles skill. It is slow going. The oak fibers are severed, across the grain and with it, over and over, pass after pass, hour after hour. Eventually, what remains is flat and smooth. Four flat boards are produced. Two long, and two short. This collection of the fiber of this Quercus nigra is packed back up along with the tools, placed back in the car, and once more taken away from the pasture where it began to be what it is.

A few days later and it's back to the basement workshop in North Carolina. More sections of rough-sawn planks are selected and transformed. 

The flat pieces of oak, that were all once part of one piece, have dovetails cut into them so that they can once again be one piece, but in a different way than they were before.

A thick piece of oak has grooves cut from its flat face.

It's late Friday night. The man works late. Into Saturday. He makes a half-second mistake that he realizes will take him hours to fix. He swears. He considers going to bed. No. He has a deadline. He works through the night and into the morning. By late morning this oak has become a box. It has dovetailed sides and a beveled top. But then it becomes something more. The man and his immediate family add some private, personal touches. Finally, a small bag containing something simultaneously very ordinary and very special is placed inside, and the joints are glued and clamped for the night. The inside of the box has become something beautifully and meaningfully different.

It's Sunday, around noon. The oak box is released from its clamps. The glue squeeze-out is carefully removed with a sharp chisel. The surface of the oak is given a thorough rub down with a natural, fragrant wax mixture.

The man loads it up in his car once more. When they reach their destination, he pulls the oak box out and carries it to a patch of green grass in the sunshine. The family that sits in front of it is the same family it has always been. But it has become something different. The loving, life-filled, curly-haired mother is not physically present. But she is. Her fibers are woven throughout the family, inextricably a part of everything they were before. Everything they are now. Everything they will be. She is a part of all of it. 

Even as it becomes something different.