Stories

On an autumn afternoon, the sky is bright and clear and it makes you remember why people call days like these “crisp.” The air is cool and the brilliant colors of the leaves stand out against the perfect sky. It’s as though you’ve just put on some 3-D glasses and you’ve been looking at a flat, dull world until now. The sky somehow seems higher up and further away than usual, yet at the same time the treetops seem closer. Maybe you’ve just grown.

You walk past a house where the leaves have been neatly raked into great piles, leaving the green grass exposed. You are reminded of this awful chore and the blisters from using the rake too long. But when you were younger, your father was the one who would rake up the leaves and you would run and jump into them, and hear them crackling and rustling all around you. You remember the nutty, mossy smell of the leaves and the way the smell clung to your hair and clothing. There’s an old photograph of you buried in a huge pile of leaves with just your head sticking out. You would have been about four then, too young to have been in kindergarten yet.

You haven’t been enjoying the autumn this year. You’ve been too busy dreading the long, dull winter ahead; months of white and gray and freezing cold. But, today, walking, it starts to come back to you. At the age of 8, you pronounced autumn you favorite season. It’s been so long since you’ve seen a real autumn. Ten years, to be exact. Ten years in Los Angeles that feel like fifty. Ten years that made you forget who you were and where you came from. Ten years that made you give away your coats and boots, sweaters and sweatshirts, little by little to the Good Will. Ten smoggy years that made you forget what clear, clean air can look like and how it feels when snow falls for the first time.

You walk through a rarely used stretch of sidewalk and the leaves rustle up past your ankles, almost to your calves. In fourth grade you learned that leaves don’t actually change color in the fall. Leaves are full of those colors all summer, and it’s just the sun that makes the green dominant, makes the leaves seem like green is the only thing they want to be. You regard these brilliant leaves with the green of jealousy, and you wonder when you will let it all go.

You’ve tried to see this return home as a new beginning, a fresh start, a return to your roots. You’ve been afraid to admit to yourself and others what it really is: admitting defeat. You are admitting that the world is too much and the trials are too difficult. You did okay for a while, but now you have to admit it: you can’t make it alone.

You walk past a house decorated for Halloween and you remember endless parades of children ringing your doorbell. Some shouting “Trick or Treat!” others just mumbling it and some just holding up the bag and waiting. You buy candy every single Halloween, but you haven’t seen a trick-or-treater in years. You end up eating the candy yourself for the first half of November, then throwing the rest away when you start to feel guilty about the calories. Is the holiday really that different now, or is it you that’s changed?

Everything about autumn, about the town seems familiar, and you remember it all, little by little. There were bonfires where the smell of wood smoke and burnt marshmallows hung thick in the cool night air. And then the parties flavored with apples, pumpkins, cinnamon and nutmeg. It was a time of simplicity, when things were so certain and you were optimistic and innocent.

But even though you remember and can reminisce with the locals about county fairs and maple sugar candy, you still have an outsider quality. You wear the clothes and shoes that were popular somewhere else, and have a haircut that was trendy there. Subtle differences, but they add up. Your car still has license plates from another state and you see the way people stare at you when you get out of your car, trying to figure out what you’re doing here.

You don’t fit in now. You never felt you belonged here, which is why you left in the first place. You now realize that you belonged here more than anywhere you’ve been since.

You come to a park and sit on a bench beneath the ancient oak trees. You stare at the ground, deep in thoughts and memories. Gradually you realize that you’re staring at acorns and there’s something unusual about them, and you squint at them, trying to figure it out. You lean forward, pick one up and examine it before you realize what it is: they’ve sprouted.

They all have one greenish-white root or sprout poking through the shell. You scoff at the absurdity of this, realizing they’ll all die when the weather turns colder. But at the same time, part of you wants to take them home, protect them, and baby them. You picture your whole apartment full of yellow-green baby oak trees come spring. Little pots of dirt and hope surrounding you.

But you drop the acorn, shake your head, and move on.