Leaves

 The curb that follows the line of our property is always strewn with leaves. These leaves fall constantly from the Live Oak trees in our yard.

They litter our patch of suburban land and line the street in front of our house incessantly.

I see these leaves every day and depending on my mood or the weather or the general state of things, they do different things to me.

Sometimes I look at our leaves and they make me tired. I see them and I am reminded of the endless list of chores we have to do: mowing, blowing, edging, cleaning gutters, trimming trees. And that’s just the outside. There are other lists. Laundry lists, grocery lists, lists of things to give to Good Will, lists of things to put into or pull down from the attic, lists of errands to run, lists of other lists to make. It overwhelms me.

Sometimes I look at our leaves and they make me excited. I eagerly anticipate the moment when Elias awakes from his nap so we can go outside and play in them. I cannot count the times he has run through these leaves on our curb, kicking and dancing and delighting in the way they crunch and crinkle beneath his feet. Every time we play this game, and we do so often, he whines when it is time to go inside. And every time, because he’s getting so big, I fear it might be the last time he wants to play this way, the last time he can find such joy in so simple a thing. I treasure it.

Sometimes I look at our leaves and they make me paranoid. That we are terrible neighbors. That the woman across the street - who has no husband or children and spends every weekend working in her yard to make our neighborhood a beautiful place to live - is plotting against us. I worry that she sits by her window at night, staring at the undergrowth that fills our driveway, calculating my untimely death by drowning in a sea of leaves or by choking on some green leafy vegetable.

But then I think for a minute and I know how silly that is. Occasionally I smile at that woman or we say hello. I gesture from behind the stroller and then I stop because Eli wants to get out again and run through the piles we have made. She takes a break from her work and looks up from behind her sunglasses. She nods at me and waves at Eli with gloved hands then goes back to planting this season’s flowerbeds. She seems to enjoy watching him recklessly play in our leaves even as she’s working so hard all by herself to rake and gather and bag her own. Sometimes I look at our leaves and they make me thankful.

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I included this entry as part of a Mom Blogging writing sample to ClubMom.com.