Solo Mother

a perfect autumn day

by christina on November 8th, 2008

Never mind weather in the low 70’s lately, it’s time for fall.

The King of Everything has been fascinated by falling leaves since he was a baby. I remember one January we came back to the US for a visit–we’d been living in the desert for a while, and the little guy had never seen leaves on the ground, that he could remember. We must have spent an hour in the circle that day, throwing leaves into the air, crinkling them between our fingers, and laughing like wild things.

For days now, the kid has been asking me to make a leaf pile he can jump into. We live in the city, in a condo. The grassy areas around the building are so well maintained that, even if I owned a rake, there wouldn’t be enough leaves to rake. So I’ve been putting off his burning desire… until today.

This morning we hustled down a main street on our way to the subway and his dance class when the wind kicked up and three young trees blew down leaves like golden flakes, and the boy was off in a flash. We ran around with two other little kids who had just happened to be standing on that particular corner when nature and my kid both decided to go wild. We all tried to catch the leaves before they hit the ground, and shouted with glee at the effort. I knew that when we got home from dance class, we were going to have to satisfy my son’s yearning for a leaf pile.

Luckily, there was a plethora of beauty laying on our front walk in hues of bright yellow to orange to red. We swept them patiently into a single pile at the entrance to our walk, there on the concrete, and then the boy spent a good hour running like a mad thing and wiping himself out in his pile of leaves. He had such an incredible time. I thought him utterly mad to do it, but I remember playing in the leaves at school during recess, and how much fun we’d have building forts with them, and making paths, and burying ourselves in them. The musty, crackling odor of them, the dust and the tang and the age of them.

The best part was the memory this stirred in the eyes of the passersby, the secret smiles, the laughs of sudden recognition and delight as people caught on to what my little nut was doing, running full tilt and screaming at the top of his lungs and flinging himself into the pile of fallen foliage.

We are all too busy to stop and enjoy the small things. When you find yourself, in your rushed, single mother days, saying no to something that should get a yes, stop. Wonder about it for a while. And then go find a big pile of leaves for jumping into. Your heart–and your kids–will thank you for it.

Photo credit: Falling Leaves on Flickr

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POSTED IN: family fun, ritual