Summer's Demise

This evening I strolled through the wet, grey streets of the quaint riverside town I inhabit.
The large digital display atop the old bank building read 68 degrees and I felt the edges of my lips curl upward. Autumn approaches. I can hear it's melody in the distance. You see, dear Sinners, Autumn provides creative transfusion.
I can smell the leaves dying already, and I am readying my veins for new stock.

The Elephant Box Part I

This will be the first part of a longer story. The emotional truth and detailed nature of this life changing event will no doubt make it a challenge for me to write in one sitting. I will write as much as feels natural now and continue the story again soon.

Enjoy...

Upon my father's death years ago, not much was passed along to his seven children. Rather, a letter was given to each in advance of his demise. In said letter, he expressed his desire that all choices to pass along his belongings be made (and rightfully so) by his soon to be grieving bride.

Upon his death, I was given a few antique rifles and the family crest. I expected that would be the end of it. Five years passed.

At a recent funeral, my step-mother approached me and recommended I remove a box from her car. A box of things belonging to my father. Things I did not know existed. My breath left me, and I took the keys from her hand. Her new husband (a lovely man named Andy) ironically escorted me to the automobile and helped to retrieve a massive cardboard vessel from the front seat. He left with a sweaty brow and much haste, seeming to understand that the gravity of this moment had nothing to do with the weight of the box.

I opened the torn top flaps, and beneath that smoldering midday sun I gazed upon the most profound gift I have ever or will ever receive(d).

Among various significant items within the box was another box. Ancient, wooden, and hand-crafted. I removed the cracked lid and immediately felt a salty drop emerge from my eye. This box, this, tiny museum, was far too significant to be sifted through on the sorrow-trodden asphalt of a funeral home parking lot. This gift deserved the comfort of low light and whiskey. The sort of thing to be inspected closely, with each of it's elements spread out on the floor before me. This was history. My history.
The missing pieces of a man I knew only through a single short-sighted lens. Atop the stack of faded and torn contents within the box, a photograph stared back at me. The face I recognized, but not much else. The picture was of a man in the most graceful of ballet stances. Slim. Shoulders back. Eyes narrow. Poised. Strong. The Elephant in 1952. Just several years younger than I am now. He was a dancer.

Sj