The Perfect Day...from Autumn's perspective

I see so many of you...you who spend so much psychic energy telling the world about all the beauty you see in your children.
I feel so alone sometimes...because I am different. I spend much psychic energy telling my children about the beauty I still see in the world.

So yesterday, I did not spend the afternoon leaving you, my child, alone under the care of some random video game, (although I won't brag that I've never done this.) I did not leave you in order to give myself time to spend squatting behind my back bumper to post some sticker telling the world just which honor roll touts your academic achievements. Nor did I leave you watching some TV program while I spent the afternoon on a ladder, posting the heavy plastic banner that screams your name and school and is speckled with icons of all your beneficial achievements. I was not just-another-sucker lining the pockets of a fundraiser who garnered my vanity. Rather than these tasks, I spend the day...

...taking you, my littlest one into the woods. For every season has its one day: the day that bears the motherlode of its secret reason for being. And in the autumn, that secret is hidden in the trees.

They are ladies in waiting, processing into the season's last fling, the ball to end all balls until spring comes again. So full of personality are they when they show their colors; and although some say much of their color depends on the particulars of the onset of cold and rain as these seasons make their dramatic change, still the trees tell more than just the stark history of the past few days' weather.

Take for instance the fluttering banks that are as teenagers, draped in scarlet under a spangle of gold. Waving and whispering secrets to each other. Lovely, but all so much alike.

And here are the fading debutantes in their chiffon, lemony with a hint of lime here and there...calling back to the citrus-summer of their prime, moaning as it dwindles away.

And there, don't miss that one: she is often standing alone rather than clustered with others. She is the mid-lifer, the worker, the mother. She seems bland and uneventful, until you know her closely. Draw near and you see she has discerned the balance that escapes many of her younger companions. Each leaf a different shade and brilliant, nevertheless she appears overall a soft mauve taffeta, this duchess of diversity.

Here and there stand groves that noticeably flap their leaves. These charmed trees sparkle and shine like silver-laced cherries, surrounded by equally charmed circles of bushes, these like popping raspberries, a fuchsia glow. Though small, the bushes are ever learning the etiquette of their shading, the boldness of their pure coloring. The formal garden aspect even yet visible in the wild woods as we trek through these groves.

In deep contrast are the fading wallflowers, sporting no bolder a change from summer than a shift to celery brocade, afraid to commit to an attention-getting shade even as the leaves skulk right off their branches in the wee hours of the party.

Walk deeper and see more...the matrons: tall, round, austere. At a distance domineering, but seen close they are delicate and wispy in the form of their leaves. Cloaked in deep burgundy because a lady of such age loses all her dignity if she slips much off-center from gray or black. Burgundy silk is acceptable for such a festive day as this, since deep navy isn't really a choice. That color is given to the sky to wear. But not this day. This day the skies are the jesters, the ones livening the party with their diamond-print blouses of gray-black and white cloud, trimmed with geese songs for bells on hat and boot-toe.

Finally, at the heart of the wood is the queen of the forest. She who ever waves graciously in her gleaming bronze velvet. Tap her trunk and out drips a dewy brass. Tap her trunk and out drips heavenly caramel. It is she who reminds that God said, " 'Let the land sprout with vegetation - every sort of seed-bearing fruit. These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came.' And that is what happened...and God saw that it was good."
Genesis 1:11-12