The last week in October, during which I was on the east coast, was filled with many activities, but my favorite, even including my birthday, was my unplanned viewings of nature’s magnificent seasonal changes. Her comforting, shade giving leaves were changing from a pleasing, vibrant green to spectacular and awe inspiring pinks, reds, oranges, and yellows. I probably shouldn’t have even been allowed to drive because the shapes of the trees and the colors which were often almost translucent or florescent as the chilly fall sun sprinkled her magical light upon this changing spectacle caught my attention like nothing else has. I think I might have even made my passenger nervous from time to time or at least unsure of the age of her driver when I would blurt out with youthful exuberance regarding some tree or other.
The once leaf-filled trees were thinning out leaving bare and exciting looking branches whose various shapes and sizes reached out in multiple directions. It was like a tasteful and alivening strip tease! From one day to the next things were changing. It was very like remembering life with my baby daughter who is now almost twenty-one. When she was an infant and into her toddler years, she was often delightfully different from one day to the next; my experience with these magnificent trees was almost an emotional match as I watched things become slightly different and always more beautiful from day to day until the day I was leaving.
The day I left the east was the day I decided to take pictures, but many of my beautiful trees were now filled with brown, crinkly, and uninteresting foliage, and it hit me…
this was all just a death knoll. I had watched this beautiful, exciting season move from vibrancy to death. The leaves had gone from a beautiful extravaganza of color to dull yellows and browns. Supple, soft leaves splattered with color had become stiff and dull. Squishy, silent paths filled with newly fallen leaves had become walkways that announced one’s coming with a noisy crunching sound. And then I wondered: what judgment am I making about going from one state to the other. Perhaps, I thought, this was just a vibrational shift from one state to another.
Though it might appear that death is upon them, it is temporary. In six or seven months a new cycle will begin, and I would very much enjoy being there to watch as buds begin to appear, and the sexy, exciting branches begin to fill with a new kind of life.
And then I began to think about what this means for us as humans. I wonder why we can’t just live this way? Why is it that old age is considered an unpleasant, hated movement directly from green to crumbly brown? What about all the colorful possibilities and excitement that can exist in the middle from green to brown, supple to crunchy?
I have decided that I want my waning years to be colorful and bright. I want to shimmer and glow and be translucent and extravagant. I want to use the time I have left to explore and learn and grow and develop and sing and dance and play and have more fun than I’ve had, maybe ever. I imagine that a leaf has a wonderful time growing from bud to leaf, but then it just hangs out for the next six or so months; I would be willing to bet that the most fun it has is the change from green to vibrant and exciting colors, and it makes me wonder where the life of the leaf goes just as I wonder where the life of me will go when my body changes from red and pink and yellow and orange to the soft grey stuff that the Nautilus Society will hand back to whomever wants it when I’m done with it.
Time marches on, and rather than regret it, I intend to embrace it, and to find the joy and playfulness in it, and I invite you to enjoy this journey with me.
copyright 2009 by Nancy Grossman
When I was a kid, autumn felt like the real New Year -- brand new school clothes and shoes, a neat stack of clean notebooks, a pencil case filled with freshly sharpened Ticonderoga #2's -- a new class, a new year, another chance to start fresh again.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year, everybody, whatever your season!
I once lived in St. Louis, Missouri and I loved the autumn in the Midwest with the changing of the trees and the colorful display out my kitchen window of the woods below my house. It was my favorite time of year and I miss that in California. Rather than a preparation for the "death" that winter often symbolizes,I found autumn invigorating, more like a harbinger of a period to come when one could cocoon, turn inward and prepare for a time of introspection and evaluation during the cold weather. I saw winter as a gift that autumn offered to me to enjoy in a world where "busy-ness" and daily duties often overwhelm and leave no time for thoughtful reflection.
ReplyDeleteEvery stage of life is beautiful in its own way. Even crunchy is good - nothing's quite like the crunch of fallen leaves under foot. I plan to follow your lead, exploring, learning and growing until my last breath. Thanks, Nancy, for reminding me of my favorite season's pleasures. Living in California tends to make us forget those glorious colorful days.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to be about endings - but of something one doesn't want, in some ways, to end. It's easier to let when it's not something cherished. When it is something cherished it's more painful somehow...that what I feel this is about deep in its soul.
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