Down From the Attic: The Falling Leaves

by Mewsette

The falling leaves.. drift by my window...
The Autumn leaves... of red and gold...

The red leaves came falling and blowing from an old oak tree that only turned red on one side - the side facing west for the day's-end sun. It was in our front yard when we lived on the mountain. I had a high window there, with a lace curtain that hung like a shade. Nobody but me got in that window, and I hid behind the lace curtain, so of course my mom couldn't see me there. She took a picture of that window, but I bet she doesn't know I'm in it.

Those red leaves were big and bright and crackley, and seemed to have a good time blowing up high all over in the crisp Fall air. But they all seemed to end up in a pile in the corner of the carport. No imagination. If I was one of them, I'd have blown high over the house into the woods in back, through the trees and across the stream,down to the edge of the holler to see the bobcat that lived down there.

The gold leaves fell from smaller trees I saw out the front bedoom window where my window seat was. They came drifting down slower and straighter, like they didn't really want to but hadn't much choice. They'd lay around in the yard till they were in the mood to go somewhere, and then let a breeze waft them up across the dirt road and down the hill, a few at a time. No spontaneity. I was still a young cat and, if I'd been in that yard, you couldn't have stopped me from dashing across that road and down the green hill. My mom knew it, too. That's why I was an indoor cat by then, like it or not.

Now my window seat is in the porch window of a different house. Here I can see a low tree with small leaves that go on being green clear until Winter. Boy, are they stubborn. Once in a while some of those come dribbling down the tree trunk like they want to stick to it. They just don't want to go anywhere. No cooperation. But they are already home. I didn't used to understand that, but now I know how they feel. I'm home and I don't want to go anywhere, either.

Some native Ozarkians of old used to say that the blowing leaves were spirits. Someday maybe my spirit will blow high over the mountain, past the house I loved and into the woods where the wild side of me wanted to be. Maybe it will blow over the dirt road and green hillside to find a cool, shady glen on the edge of a sunbeam for the quiet side of me. But I think, if my spirit was a leaf, it would be like the little green ones, still soft and full of life, refusing to leave home. It would always be right here, ready to come down from the attic.