sweet t:

It’s just like the song says, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.  Sometimes though, if you’re lucky, or especially evolved, you can know what you’ve got while you still have it.  That must be as close to heaven as we can get; loving the things we have hold of. All of which is just to say that I miss the fire of autumn leaves!  Maple and catalpa, oak and ash, and especially the mitten-shaped sassafras Jim and I pass under at the park on fall walks—when we first met, Jim showed me how to poke eyes into them and make them into little red ghosts.  I miss walks.  I miss Jim.  I miss cattails and sassafras and the ponds out at Mendon.   But here’s what I have: a gigantic old magnolia out front, with leaves so leathery they dry hard and heavy and sound like plastic forks clattering onto the sidewalk when they drop.   I am learning to love raking them up, because let’s face it; how many more Octobers will I spend raking up magnolia leaves?  And something else.  When her bloom comes this spring in great swaths of fragrance and flower, I will feel a part of it all.  By then, Memphis will be something like home, and who knows, in a few years, walking under the sassafras and maples out at Deep Pond, I may long for the sound of the magnolia leaves rattling under my rake.