I woke up this morning facing east. The sun had risen and the leaves were falling. Falling. Fall is nearing it's end here in the Blue Ridge, and it is happening fast.
Outside my back door is a forest rising up from a small ravine. My back porch looks at trees mid-trunk, about the 20' mark. The tops of the trees tower and sway another 20' sometimes 30' above me. Crazy vines climb and swirl around the stands of Black Walnut, Tulip Poplar and Oak. Here and there a wild splash of vibrant red among the yellow, green, brown and orange dying leaves catches my eye as they wiggle and dance with the wind. Still, they hold on amidst a shower of falling leaves looking like an impressionist painting set into motion.
I woke up this morning looking out at all this color and imagined building a home with a wrap around porch. I imagined tall Pampous grass planted at the front stoop and saw it sway in the imaginary wind. I imagined large terra cotta pots of maroon decorative grasses with colorful Lantana cascading down the sides. And then my mind wandered to my house in Santa Fe: not just my house but the house I lived in when I was married - our house.
At the back gate stood a huge oak barrel. I filled it with dirt and planted exactly what I had just imagined. Every day I watered it, and grass, Lantana and vine Geranium grew and spread and greeted those who entered with colorful abundance.
The flagstone walk way winded it's way through Lavender, catmint, various salvia, Jupiter's Beard and Echinacea. At it's height, the garden was a gracious wonderland in an otherwise ungracious land.
In the midst of this memory, I came back to the present as the sun broke through the clouds and illuminated four red leaves. Quietly as if to say, "Look here. The sun still shines on this gray day, and look, look. Look now because in a second, it will be gone." And sure enough, the clouds blew over again dimming the highlight to the muted but still beautiful palette that I woke to only 30 minutes earlier.
And just as the rapid passing of clouds shrouded the sun, in what seems to be the same speed, the garden and our marriage were gone.
What I held in the palm of my hand for those brief seven years wasn't only all a beautiful lush garden. It was also a stark and desperate time against which I struggled to keep the encroaching desert at bay. But with limited natural resources, water and family being among them, my garden and the garden of our marriage succumbed.
The sun has danced in and out of the clouds this morning, and its rays have acted as a spotlight on different sections of my backyard. Now a hot spot of yellow glows just beyond the tiny red leaves that were illuminated just minutes ago. The wind picks up plucking one of the red leaves from it's tiny hold, and sends it soaring. I feel sad and elated all at once. By a stroke of luck I saw this leaf's last grip on life, and now I watch as it ascends, its last show of glory before its death and final return to the rich earth below.
I imagine the glimpse into my garden and my family's beautiful home and marriage was exactly that: a look at a highlighted moment that in its breath held all the beauty of the days of abundance; a remembrance of what I, we, held in the palm of our hands and what by the sheer forces of nature tore from our tiny but also intrinsic hold.
Every day, every moment is like a leaf in the palm of our hands. It's a fine line between understanding that things naturally pass, that if we grip too tightly we crush the leaf and lose its beauty, and if we don't hold on at all, we never fully know what it is we had to begin with.
I am grateful for the natural time of the season - that it allows me this moment to take in the final curtain call until the last leaf is holding, standing as it were, before its brave and humble farewell.
