I didn’t realize that autumn had arrived in the South. I’ve learned somehow to adjust my expectations, and so wasn’t looking for the change in temperature and leaf until November, really. I had noticed some yellowing here and there, but nothing flagrant, nothing bright. The change was still pending; the change was yet something to look forward to.
*****
I had to leave my house extra early on Wednesday when it was still dark. It had been dark for days: dark and grey and raining, and as I drove up our street, a gusting wind knocked a handful of yellow leaves across the road. Until that moment, I had no idea it was already time for this.
Later one of my students gasped, looking out the window. I turned and saw it too. So today was the day when the leaves would fall! And sure enough, leaves were falling at the edge of the woods– one, two, four at a time, falling when the spirit of the wind moved them.
*****
The yellow maple that stands just at the bend in our street was vibrantly yellow days ago. Today its arms are empty, and a yellow blanket is pooled around its feet.
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I left the school building briefly on Thursday and found, to my surprise, that the perennial grey had been abandoned and the sky was an uninterrupted blue. The humidity was long since gone, and the sunlight attached itself to everything: to the flat edges of the pine needles, the gloss of a woman’s hair, and the leaves. The leaves. Orange and red and extravagant yellow, everywhere I looked.
*****
This morning we awoke to rain. I heard it hitting the flats of the leaves before I opened my eyes, and it occurred to me that the rain would knock them all to the ground before the sun came out again, before I had another chance to get a really good look at them.
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I’ve always loved gloomy Sundays: rain and cold and a fire on the hearth, a cup of tea and a good book. But today I thought I wished for sunlight.
This afternoon I went for a walk. All was grey and raining again; the trail I walked was lacquered in places with leaves. The light suffused the clouds. It might be any time of day in this light, as the sunless grey vault was leaving no clues. It’s a shame to be autumn in this kind of weather, with no direct sunlight to pick out the glorious leaves.
But here’s the mercy: there was something electric in the leaves themselves, an incandescence made of their color. Along the edges of the woods, the yellows and oranges asserted themselves, muted to be sure, but Ever So Present Nonetheless.
I am learning to live like this: Regardless.
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Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed wihtin me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
the 42nd Psalm, verse 11
