On Monday I was driving with my daughter and I saw three leaves, still attached to each other, drop to the ground. There was nothing light or autumnal about it. It was raining and dark and we were coming home from having followed my Mom, in an ambulance, to the hospital. In the cone of my headlights the doomed cluster of leaves fell as fast and straight as a suicide. And I thought maybe that the season was threatening sadness and tragedy.
Today I sit at my desk in the reservations department, looking out at the Horseshoe Falls, and off to my right I see bright-yellowed leaves on a tree that sits on the edge of the escarpment. The leaves aren't falling. The updraft is lifting them from the tree. They take flight with joy, as though they have someplace better and higher to be; as though, like Jonathon Livingston Seagull, they have decided to be more than what their fellows have accepted. My Mom still has more tests, and more tests after that, but now I wonder if the season promises relief and, perhaps, more seasons to come for her.
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