Raking Leaves

My weekend in the late fall in New England was spent raking leaves, in full anticipation of the upcoming winter that took me by surprise last year, when an ice storm layered my steep driveway so thick that I had to get a running start to climb. California was so much simpler.

It's funny how life works out sometimes. Never perfect and yet ever so in comparative hindsight. We left California social pariahs from a matriarchy of mothers group hegemony, where right took a back seat to alliance, and privacy was jealously reconnoitered by neighbors bearing gifts and smiles--and hearts that churned black sludge. Our mortgage however, was a third of what we pay here.

I read an article in the paper this weekend that many New Englanders are living above their means, and plan to move away from the state. So too with us, as we consider moving south to Houston where houses are bigger for less, thanks no doubt to the low cost of building homes with illegal immigrant labor, and where resides the majority of my imperfect but loving family.

But here in New England we have a house surrounded by trees, from whence comes the occasional fox or coyote. Two or three groundhogs live in our woods and under a boulder in our back yard, and we make a sport of giving them a spook, then laugh as they strain under their weight, comically waddling away. We have birds, turtles, snakes, mice, squirrels, chipmunks, an occasional skunk. The kids love it here. My littlest boy even learned to hold out his hand for the dragonflys, that land on his makeshift perch without a care, as he says, "See, see?"

The neighbors respect each other, and social life moves slowly. Nobody cares how much money I make, or feels inadequate because my lawn mower has a higher CC engine. Across the street is a subdivision of custom homes connected by a single-lane circuitous private road, beyond with is a swamp where duck hunters roam for two weeks of the year. There are no fences, reminiscent of a sweet expanse of childhood memory, when I could run across yards and get a smile from resident families barbecuing on back porches. The collection of yards forms a patch of green heaven, where kids have the length of a football field to roam, where dads play catch with their boys, and girls run and do somersaults, and borrow the neighbors dog for the day.

And slowly, but as steady as the incoming tide, we have friends, the kind that mean what they say and say what they mean. Gone are the automatons of yesterday, replaced by real and feeling people, whose only interest is living together and living well.

For the first time since I was a little boy, I understand full-well what I have to leave behind.