Combating Leaves

One morning, not long ago, I awoke with a new understanding of an expression I had heard before.  Overnight my rectangular patch of green grass had transformed into an actual “blanket of leaves.”  You can imagine my surprise when I looked out my kitchen window and could not see one speck of green anywhere in my yard.

To be completely fair, there had been some patches of leaves on the grass in the days leading up to this, but nothing to inspire me to go outside and remove them.  Just a few harmless leaves, why disturb them?  But on this one morning, there was no denying it; I had to get rid of them.  I looked up.  It wasn’t readily apparent that my great silver maple had dropped any leaves at all.  This was a tad troublesome, as it looked to me like there were at least 100 trees worth of fallen leaves on my lawn already.  More was coming, of that I could be sure.

As I pondered the new vista out my kitchen window, I realized this was the first year of my life that I have ever been solely responsible for leaf disposal.  In my adolescence my parents owned a blower and had sufficient space to simply blow the leaves off their grass into the adjoining forest.  And while I certainly appreciated the blowers’ efficiency, I am embarrassed to say that for all these years I have viewed raking leaves as quite a romantic pastime.  It’s like a postcard for a picture perfect fall day: colorful autumn leaves drift slowly from the stately trees and a woman wrapped in a woolen sweater and bright knit hat peacefully rakes leaves in front of her white picket fence.  Hot chocolate and perhaps an apple pie await her indoors.  Beautiful, yes?

My husband, who grew up in leafy New England and knows better, happily handed over raking duty to me.  I bundle up my daughter and grab that ancient instrument of leaf removal, the indomitable rake.  There is a certain finesse to raking leaves I hadn’t realized before; a rhythm, a pattern.  At first I am simply enjoying hauling them into a pile to let my two-year-old leap into.  She shrieks with laughter.  I take pictures. 

After only a short time she loses interest, much faster than my own child self imagined.  When I was her age we lived in southern California and although we had one magnificent tree in our small backyard, the ground was mostly a slab of concrete and bounding into piles of fallen leaves never entered our sphere of play.  I’d always imagined that for a child it would be enormously fun.

No matter.  I turn up the intensity with my dear rake.  A wind has picked up and I notice my ever-growing pile of leaves has begun to flitter back across the lawn.  My daughter is banging at the door to go inside.  I do what I can with the piles I have made and go inside to reevaluate.  To my dismay there is no hot chocolate or freshly baked apple pie.  I’m starting to feel a little gypped. 

The next morning I awake to find a brand new “blanket of leaves.”  We repeat the process except this time my daughter loses interest after only a few minutes and I’m left alone, silently cursing this ancient instrument called the rake I had so adored just yesterday.  My arms and back are a little stiff, but they are calling for snowfall tonight.  And although I don’t know what happens to a blanket of leaves when snowfall covers them, I’m pretty sure its not good.  I’m thinking of chucking the rake and asking my neighbor to borrow his leaf blower.

After days of this repeated pattern I look around with satisfaction.  A terrific windstorm has hastened the process and just the last few holdouts cling to the silver maple in my backyard.  Whenever the wind finally loosens the last remnants of a once vibrant fall, I suspect they will be spared the rake for this year. 

Previously published in "The Star," Grand Coulee, Washington. November 30, 2011

Traditions to be thankful for

Much of the holiday season is made up of rituals. Each family has their own unique rituals that carry them through the cooking, baking, gift giving and decorating. Yet there is one aspect of the holiday season that is ubiquitous across America, the Thanksgiving dinner. One night of the year all of America sits down to the same meal, with only slight variations. The food has become a nationwide ritual that is the fulcrum to the holiday itself.

Compared to Christmas, or even Halloween, the Thanksgiving we know is a fairly new tradition. Our ancestors brought with them remnants of harvest festivals they surely celebrated in their own country, giving thanks for a good crop of food to last them through the winter. And although we all know the tale of the first Thanksgiving feast between the Pilgrims and the Indians, the modern day holiday that we celebrate in such continuity was only solidified as a national holiday during the Civil War, and settled on its current date in 1941 by President Roosevelt. Regardless of its origins and relative newness, Thanksgiving is ingrained into modern life and many, myself included, find it one of the most enjoyable holidays.

The very word gives us direction into how to celebrate the day. Give thanks. Simple and clear. Find something in your life, no matter the situation, and be glad for it. Most people spend the day celebrating family and nourishment in some form. For family doesn’t always have to be a unit in the traditional sense. At dinner tables across the country people will be sitting down to celebrate the families that they have made in addition to the families they were given. Family can be a loosely defined word. How many people in your life can you be thankful for, blood relative or not? The list may be short, but I bet it is fiercely cherished.

One year, my family decided to chuck the traditional celebration of cooking, football and turkey-induced comas and decided to spend the long weekend in New York City. Although the Thanksgiving Day we celebrated that year was in itself a nontraditional celebration, our ritual activities were in fact the embodiment of the Thanksgiving holiday. We braved the freezing streets and watched the larger-than-life balloons float past during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Infinitely better in person than on TV, I might add.) We saw the Rockettes fling their symmetrically long legs high in the air during their annual Christmas Spectacular. We saw the tree in Rockefeller Center in all its twinkling glory. We didn’t see much football that year, and the turkey and stuffing wasn’t as good in a restaurant as it is in my mother’s kitchen. But every year when I see the parade on TV, I get a little tingle and remember what it was like as a teenager to stand there with my family, and I’m glad for nontraditional celebrations.

There is one ritual that we did observe that year, along with everyone else. At the very end of the Thanksgiving Parade, the marching bands’ music had faded around the next corner, and the balloons had long drifted off into lower Manhattan (or out of the TV screen). Anticipation for what awaited at the end of the parade built. Then finally, at long last, Santa in all his red velvet finery appeared in his magnificent sleigh. And at that, with the appearance of one float, the Christmas season arrived. Something more to be thankful for on this day of giving thanks.

Previously published in "The Star," Grand Coulee, Washington. November 16, 2011

The curiosity of greener grass

I’ve always thought that envy and jealousy were learned emotions. Somewhere around the adolescent years it seemed a desire for another’s life or possessions entered into the picture. As you grow up, the wisdom in the statement “The grass is always greener on the other side” makes more sense.

It turns out, I wasn’t quite right. Just about the time my daughter started crawling I noticed that babies seemed to have a fair amount of desire for another’s possessions. The surest way to get a kid crawling across the room was for another kid to have hold of a toy. At that stage I started to wonder at the “grass is always greener” statement. How many squabbles do parents break up in their lives over children fighting over a possession? Do they want it simply because the other one does too?

Could it possibly be that we are born with envy? Toddlers have an especially healthy dose of this trait, although sometimes I wonder if it is simply curiosity in disguise. Lately my daughter has discovered food envy. Anything on my plate inevitably looks better to her. With repeated exposure she would even reach for my raw broccoli, as long as it was on my plate. Try serving it to her on her own plate and its just a little tree to play with. Unsure if this is wise, I fumble on about how good it is that we are learning to share and let her take my food. It appears this is a family trait. My parents confess that when my brother and I were children they took to ordering things at restaurants for us that they wanted to eat, knowing that whatever they had, we would want.

As Thanksgiving approaches, it makes me think about the grass-is-always-greener statement again. In simplified terms, Thanksgiving is a time to take stock of what is already present in our lives and be grateful for it. Our grass is our own, even if our neighbors may seem to be greener. I can’t help but notice that just after we all come to terms with what we have, the next month we turn around and spend an entire month coveting things that we do not have but wish we did. It may be a flat screen TV or wishing for a far off loved one to be with us. But either way, I cannot help but wonder if we would start the year off in a healthier mindset if those mental activities were reversed.

The more I excessively dissect the “grass is always greener” sentiment I have come to the conclusion that I cannot believe an emotion like envy is something we are handed at birth. I’d like to believe that bad habits are something we learn. So perhaps instead what I witnessed as I watched my daughter race across the floor on her chubby knees was simply raging curiosity. And as we grow it is our task to turn that emotion into something healthier. Is our need to have something better, something perhaps our friends already have, what drives us to be smarter, faster, better? This year, should we be grateful for our innate curiosity, sometimes disguised as envy? If it will spur a just-learning baby to propel herself across a room, what else could envy teach us? If our neighbors grass truly is greener than ours, perhaps admiring it and asking what sort of products he uses on it will simply make our own grass that much brighter. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it?

 

Previously published in "The Star," Grand Coulee, Washington. November 2, 2011