Conkers or Chestnuts, Autumn or Fall?
I like to joke that I am bilingual. I speak Scottish English and American English. It’s actually a real thing. Words and how things are said can be so different! Even when I write, I sometimes have to translate so that I can be understood!
Thinking about conkers or chestnuts, I am transported back in time to my first Autumn/Fall in England. I was coming up for eight, and I had never remembered celebrating the 5th of November before. It’s a big deal in England especially. The whole town builds a bonfire, and an effigy of Guy Fawkes is burned on the top. A reminder of a man who was tried and hanged for treason for attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.
Funnily enough, it was not that that I remember. It was the smell of the bonfire, the warmth of it on a cool November night, and the light from a candle that I was old enough to hold. It was the feeling of scrunching in the leaves as I walked to school and hunting for conkers fallen from oak trees, now hidden amongst the damp leaves. I think this was where my love of Fall began!
A bit of a tomboy, one of my best friends was Robert. He was popular. He had the biggest and best chesnut. Prying open the spikey casing and revealing the shiny nut was always the most fun. We would use a nail and carefully make a hole from top to bottom in the conker and thread some string through it, finishing with a knot tied underneath. Then it was game on! Holding the string vertically, the opponent would get three tries to use their conker to break yours. Schoolyard games of the 1970s!
Early on in my discovery of winning, I realized that sometimes the biggest Chesnut was not always the strongest. My first big conker broke after many rounds of games. But It was my small, shiny one that lasted a lot longer. Often, the smaller, more dense chestnuts could beat the bigger, softer ones. Tougher on the inside, harder to aim at, and not so easily broken.
I am sure at eight, I didn’t grasp the significance of this. As a preemie baby, I was always small and wirey, as my Granny would say. But inside, I was determined to be strong. It did not come with willpower or trying to be popular, for I could never be that. But it came with an inner strength from knowing that wherever I went and whatever I did, I was not alone. There was someone greater with me. The England years were a critical part of my journey of faith, of realizing that in my outward weakness, there was an inner strength greater than myself. And somehow, that was taught through winning on the school playground with rough boys in a game of Conkers!
