Leafing Through Life

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library – Jorge Luis Borges

The day was dry and clear, and it appeared we had few more dry days ahead of us, so I decided to go out into the back yard and rake some leaves. I say “some” because I’m not too finicky. It doesn’t bother me to get most of them and leave the rest to rot and return what few nutrients they may contain back to the earth from which they sprang.

The circle of life. That’s what it’s called. The trees receive their moisture from the rains that water the earth. Water and nutrients, for the most part, are gobbled up by the roots and get converted into trunk, branch, and foliage cells. The leaves open wide and suck in the sunshine, converting those golden rays into something – God only knows what. They also draw in the carbon dioxide the plant needs, and exhales the oxygen we lunged types need.

When the leaves fall in autumn, I find myself wondering how trees breathe during the winter. The foliage is gone. Do they simply hold their breath for several months while the sun swings low, the air chills, and the rains turn to snow and ice?

Early in life, I never thought much about trees. I would complain if I had to duck under low branches while mowing (and not always successfully either, as my poor scarred noggin will affirm). We have a gorgeous maple tree in the front yard that makes mowing a challenge, not for low branches, but because it is located in such a place that makes mowing more difficult (for my somewhat obsessive/compulsive nature). It disrupts my mowing pattern and disturbs my peace worse than the thrumming of the lawnmower’s engine.

But as I have aged, I find I don’t look at trees the same way as I once did. I’ve come to appreciate them more and more. Yes, in fall I need to rake leaves, but only because it is my nature to keep the floor of the yard clean and neat. The fault for raking lies not with the tree (doing what trees do in autumn), but with me. The problem lies in MY nature, not that of the tree.

I suspect that when I rake those dried and curling corpses from around the trees from which they fell, I am removing much of what gives life to that tree and the world around it. I wonder how many worms watch me rake and think, “There goes supper!” I wonder how many creepy crawlies watch me scrape the ground (in horror) as I destroy their homes and hiding places.

Of course, out of concern for the well-being of the trees, lawn, and other plants (having removed their meals for the year), I know come spring I will head down to the store and buy a bag of chemicals I’ll have to put down (for a healthier, more luscious yard). It’s more labor and, what’s worse, the vegetation will be dining on that store-bought stuff and thinking it tastes like, um, something else.

So we come full circle. The fertilizer I put down during the vernal time of year has come back to haunt me as vegetative cast-offs. I can choose to leave them to rot (and allow nature to take its course), or I can rake them up in what is probably one of the world’s greatest acts of stupidity (not counting war). Well, I’ve never let stupidity stop me in the past and I’m not about to start now!

So off I go to rake, rake, rake / I do it all for goodness sake / I’d be better off to jump in a lake / or hit the kitchen to bake a cake / but messy yards I cannot take / so off I go to rake, rake, rake!

I don’t know if raking (or not) is good or bad. It gets me out of the house and it gets me moving, so that’s not too bad a thing.

In due season I will go the way of all flesh; then it will be my turn to fertilize the earth and someone else can choose to rake me up (or leaf me alone), and the trees will have the last laugh here in this, our valley.

Lost With the Best of Intentions

Worry often gives a small thing a great shadow – Swedish Proverb

I’m not a worrier. By that I mean, I simply don’t fret about things. Life often throws curves, but if we keep our heads and wits about us, we can generally work our way out of most predicaments.

The other day I had to drive down to Everett to sign some paperwork regarding my Dad’s estate. I ran up the address on my phone’s map app the day before, saw exactly where I needed to go, and saved it. The next day I pulled up the location on my cellphone, hit the navigate button on the touchscreen and off we went. The trip was supposed to be about forty minutes, so we gave ourselves an hour to get there.

Why so early? Because I grew up in a home where “early is on time, on time is late, and late is inexcusable.” Now, I am not prone to judging people, but must confess that people who are chronically tardy grind my grits. So that’s why we left the house with time to spare. It’s a good thing, too.

I listened to our cellular backseat driver and arrived at the appointed place with twenty minutes to spare, only there was no there there. The address didn’t exist. Horrified, I pulled over, did a search for the company I was seeking (which is nowhere as pleasant as the company I had – my wife) and it turned out the address I was looking for was not “820 street name” but “2820 street name.” I don’t know how that happened, but it did, and we still had plenty of time to make our appointment.

So I reset the Navigator and it got us downtown to near where we needed to be but, once again, there was no there there. I pulled over into the last remaining parking spot in Downtown Everett (a miracle, to be honest) and called the office I was on the hunt for. I told the receptionist where I was and she gave me quick and simple directions, so we left the parked car and walked a single block to our destination and arrived – ONE minute early (so I was ON TIME)!

There’s an old saying that if we want to give God a good laugh, all we need to do is make a plan. I understand. Life, as I said, tends to throw us curves. But I also know that planning ahead saves a lot of grief. I appreciate map and satellite technology which, up until the other day, is generally dependable, but I also know it is anything BUT flawless.

I was driving along one day in the early days of civilian quality GPS, and the device kept asking me to return to the road I was on. The GPS showed me to be about fifty yards off the highway, but I could see clearly that I was on it AND in my proper lane. That same unit had me drive around in circles in San Francisco as it had no idea how to get me from where I was to where I was heading. So, technology has its place, but it can’t replace human reasoning (completely). I have heard of people driving into lakes or rivers simply because they preferred to listen to their cell phones than to use (and believe) their eyes.

One could say they should use more common sense, but I am convinced common sense is a myth – as real as a Sasquatch and as rare as a Unicorn. Trust me, I’m not pointing fingers here. If there is one thing I know, it is that I don’t have a lot of common sense. That’s why I plan ahead!

Planning ahead removes the teeth from many of life’s worries. Before going on a trip I always have the car or truck serviced. That doesn’t mean we won’t have mechanical problems, but it reduces the chance we’ll have problems. Each day is a journey, according to the old cliché. It’s true, so I approach each day taking care of what needs to be done so I don’t need to worry about it.

Addressing every trouble spot as best I can, I’m free to enjoy my life and leave the rest to God (on time) in this, our valley.

Halloween Cometh

You can’t come back to a home unless it was a home you went away from. Carl Sandburg

I looked out the window and saw the lighted pumpkin jack-o-lantern on the porch across the street. It is a very nice decoration; it is perfect in every way.

That’s because it’s store-bought, and before you think I’m poking fun at it or the neighbors, be assured I am not. It is quite tasteful and exquisite. I just found myself reminiscing as I stared at it across the way of how much life has changed over the past number of decades.

You’ll be reading this on or about Halloween and, I must confess, that is and always has been amongst my favorite holidays of the year. It isn’t just the treats (although my sweet-tooth has never been sweeter than it is now) or the costumed hooligans running wild on their sugar-highs, but the complete lack of expectations the day holds.

Families don’t gather to feast, watch football, and argue politics. Banks and government offices remain open for business, and we pop in to do what needs doing without fretting over people “missing out” on the holidays. Kids of all ages go door to door begging (and playfully threatening mayhem) and we feign surprise, delight, or fear as we dole out the store-bought treats (because what you could catch if you ate from many of our home kitchens is truly frightful!).

The kids stroll around, many in store-bought costumes (and I’m not putting that down), but it causes me to stop and wonder: are families so strapped for time they can’t make their own costumes? If they are, that is a sad state of affairs.

Looking through old family photos I hadn’t seen in years (after my Dad’s passing), I saw the picture of my brother in his steel-gray robot costume, fashioned out of cardboard boxes cut and spray painted and hung together with duct tape. I was dressed as a swash-buckling pirate; my dad’s hat pinned into a tri-corner pirate’s hat, and my sister’s white blouse with ruffles down the front helped me look ever-so-much like Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power. The grease-painted beard helped a lot! My sisters were a fairy godmother and a royal princess (Cinderella, perhaps).

When our own kids were growing up, we made every effort to craft costumes at home, but I know there was some transitioning to store-bought options. Our daughter loved being a pumpkin and, frankly, trying to craft a pumpkin or jack-o-lantern by hand wasn’t in our household skill-set.

Still, it was fun putting costumes together and then, at dark, walking the neighborhood with our kids and listening to the shouts of glee and terror; we had one neighbor who loved sitting still on his front porch, dressed as a scare-crow, and suddenly jumping to his feet at just the last moment putting both kids and parents into immediate cardiac arrest!

Sadly, Halloween seems to be going the way of all good things. It is still a week away as I write this, and schmaltzy Christmas movies have begun their run on the cable channels. Big box stores have had their Christmas displays up for a month (at least), and the news is “reporting” that Christmas specials and sales have begun and warning consumers that if they don’t grab their stuff now, it may be (gasp) too late, later!!!

Those things are outside my control, of course. One cannot direct the rising of the sun or hold back the tides or return the world’s ills and pestilences to Pandora and her infamous Box. No amount of weeping or wailing will restore the world to a golden age which (if we’re completely honest) never truly existed in the first place.

What we CAN do, however, is carve out space and time in our lives to remember the past with thanksgiving, and see how it might shape us here and now, today. The candy, costumes, and decorations are nothing more than props and set-pieces. What counts is taking time with those we love and crafting stories we’ll tell for tomorrow.

The pumpkin across the street is made of plastic, of course, but the memories it stirs are real. The ghosts and goblins contain the hearts of children, so I’ll embrace them forever in this, our cobwebbed valley.