Fallen

Fallen leaves, fallen people.

The last few evenings' rain and wind have brought down most of the remaining leaves, plastering them to wet sidewalks.

A few weeks back, though, before the freezes, when drought felt much more prevalent, full Autumn was still in the air and the fallen foliage crunched in the best way underfoot, a crispy carpet on the Mothership lawn - likely to the chagrin of Papa Rooster, who in normal times would have raked them almost the moment they had landed.

But he, too, had fallen, several times, and after the second discharge from the hospital over a four night stay, was confined indoors - he, and all of the rest of us, navigating his new limitations around the weakness to his left side. Standing, walking, chewing, speaking were out in those early days, to say nothing of leaf raking. (Some measure of those abilities have since been regained with the start of physical and occupational therapies.) In his questioning - why this, why him? - he has arrived at an answer: The days before it happened, he had raked large piles of leaves, gone around back to get a bag, and upon returning found them blown about by the wind, and absentmindedly he cursed the skies and the gods for ruining his work, and so all of this was his due punishment. Sweet Papa Rooster.

And so it was that those several weekends ago he had to suffer from inside the house the sight of his lawn being left deliberately leafy for insects and others to have shelter over Winter, for the foliage to feed the lawn, lightly neatened only by raking up some small heaps into planting beds for natural mulching and fertilizing by me, his crunchy eldest, imposing upon his front yard the newfangled philosophies of minimal, nature-mimicking lawn care. And as I did it, I daydreamed about ridding the Mothership of much of its lawn altogether, in favor of native options to feed the pollinators... but stopped myself from getting too far ahead; I foresee, I hope, for more, more years and years of this being HIS lawn, raked his way, by him, that this Fall will turn out to be but a mere interlude, and I but a premature interloper.

We were fortunate (the doctors have said that of course no one wishes a stroke, but if one had to have befallen, this was the stroke to have). Years and years more would be fortunate. As I typed, I paused and chose carefully, for a decade might be Icarian; I am old enough, have been for a while, to know that people, as the leaves, have their seasons.