releaf

On a rare sunny day (any sunny day in the slate palette of winter here is rare), I bathed in the light and walked more than usual. It was sweater and jacket weather. You'd wonder why everyone was not out walking, with or without their dog or dogs, their kids, their spouse, roommate, friend. I prefer solo. True, more than the usual number of walkers paraded about in the almost-festive atmosphere. A reprieve from winter; not spring break but a respite. 

I like to vary my route, never taking the same exact way twice. That's easy in that it might only require me to switch sides of the street or switch the sequence. 

After a momentary mental debate, I decided to stroll down Whittier, home for nearly twenty years: marriage, birth, deaths, dogs, Russian dwarf hamsters, a parakeet, a redbud, raked leaves, shoveled sidewalks. The whole production. Why not. And I was brave enough to stay on the odd-numbered side of the street, the residential one, the one where the mail was delivered, for three years even after I was gone. 

It wasn't too hard. Keep walking. Don't stare. Don't break stride, cane with eagle handle in service.

Near the bottom of the hill, just before Lowell (authors' names about as street monikers in the neighborhood), I spotted two leaves, one greenish-yellow and the other orange-ish and yellow, wedded together, you might say welded. How striking: bright, diaphanous, frail, brilliant. so brilliant I assumed the leaves must have just fallen. They hadn't had time time to dry, brown, and curl.

I stopped to pick them up and held the twinned maple leaves all the way home, my companions.

Once home, I placed them on the counter, the faux-granite peninsula between the living room and the kitchen, a place to venerate these finds. I snapped some photos with my phone when the afternoon light streaming in was strongest. The blare of sun highlighted the vains each leaf exposed to the world.

The next day, on the weekly Zoom with my three adult children (that phrase has long struck me as an amusing oxymoron), I enthused about my natural treasures.

"Here. Look. I'll show you. Can you see them? Aren't they amazing?"

Pause.

"Oh wow."

"Um, Dad . . . "

"What?"

"Take a look. Isn't that plastic?"

"What. Where?"

"Over by the stem."

"Hold on. Let me take a look."

More than taking a look, I concentrated on feeling the twinned beauties.

Definitely fake.

"Holy mackerel!"

Laughs all around.

With a dose of sheepish embarrassment.

And revelation.

Along with wonder of a different magnitude and order.