Spun Fantasy

I love Fall more than I like Spring. I love the colors, the crisp cold, excuses for fires, making love, and sipping coffee. I feel alive. Vibrant. Willful. Invincible. And I think it's because the coming dormancy of winter offers a fail-safe for change; it's expectations given room to allow for creativity and flare under the quilted warmth of hibernation. And for all of my girlish affectations, I prefer the artistry of a gnarled tree to the fragility and uninspired beauty of mere flowers.

I love history, lines, dimension. I have long since been absorbed with curiosity of the old. From my youth, I blithely lived for the exploration of New England's ancient rock walls leading to obscure cemeteries from a century or more ago. I loved to sweep dead leaves from the crumbling remains of an old headstone and let my imagination dance along the edges of re-creation. Fascination. Fixated on the stories of the past and yet thoughtful all the same about comparisons of what could be. Vision. Wondering about the infant whose tiny body was laid to rest; wondering about the people who occupied the space long before I picked my way through the foliage and disturbed their domain.

And perhaps that's why I revel in the change of leaves the most. It's more than green; it's more than the sweeping salute to wind and wispy clouds on a summer day - it's representation of experience, collection, memory. The leaves tell us more about people than we think to see; for we don't recognize their beauty clearly until the fiery sunburst of a last hurrah just before they are laid to rest. We are complacent in appreciation of loved ones until something triggers the recognition of mortality. We don't give homage to the now as we should and wait for the safety of wrinkles to finally meet peace should we have the luxury to grace this world that long.

Yet children recognize it. When my youngest son was two, he said to me one day as the wind was blowing fiercely outside, "Mom, Look! The wind is tickling the trees and the leaves are laughing." And sure enough, the trees were shaking from the weight of the wind, and the more they shook the harder he laughed. "Look, Mommy. The trees are happy."

And those are the moments when I stop to appreciate the green, giddy young life inside of me and value the varied kaleidoscope of wisdom in shades of unexpected color from dear ones just departed. I will remember my ten-year-old self who idly noticed insistent green vines growing through the disintegrating remains of leaves long dead. And I will appreciate both for what they are: Lessons from nature flowing in a rhythm of time unaffected by anxiety or fearful purpose. Green seeking the light of the sun, reaching, soaring - soaking up highs and bending will to unexpected weather, day in and day out. Gloriously accepting of lifespan and generously offering welcome to the changes in sunshine, finding ways to give shade in the cycles of life.

It is humbling to think that those carefully etched pictures, done with simple crayon on paper over a freshly picked leaf, actually mirror the beautiful lines of an ancient and weathered hand. And in that there is connection. Spirit. Reverence and awareness. Veins of joy running, skipping. Laughing. Finding peace. Ageless and content in the passages of time.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl