The family’s computer went on the fritz last week. Just as well, I guess. Things have happened, and I’ll get to them eventually here, but I’m not much in the mood right now.
It’s cold today. I saw leaves on the sidewalk. The air smells of autumn. Heidi always enjoyed autumn. Somehow, she saw beauty in the colors of death on the trees. She felt mystery in the passing of summer, in the birth of winter. She said she could taste the crispness of fall on her tongue. I used to harass her about that.
I’m a beach girl. Give me sun and give me sand, and I’ll love you forever. Give me barefeet and shorts and just enough breeze. Give me A/C when it’s too hot; give me ice cream to savor in the heat. Give me shade to nap in and nights like a sigh of pleasure.
Not Heidi. She would point out how brilliant the sun was in the cold sky; I replied that the sun should not set before supper. She loved hot chocolate and bonfires because the world was growing cold. She loved the sun because it was passing away.
Today, I’ve been jealous of her. Here I am, longing for summer while all the world dies, and she’s gone, gone to enjoy Paradise. Maybe she always understood the world was passing away, and now she’s gone with it, to something far better. I have no doubt of that. We talked of God and Jesus, too, and in those last days, when it seemed like we were about to join the world with all the optimism of youth, she talked of him in such a way as to embarass me.
But the leaves are falling slowly to the ground now. My old dreams are shriveled and stomped upon.
My dad says that tree roots grow in the winter when the tree looks dead. He said it because we need to rotor-rooter our sewer pipe. I didn’t take it that way.
I need all the encouragement I can get. Things are changing, the wind is blowing, and sometimes, I am very cold.
I have been enjoy the last few nice days. I like that about the roots growing, it’s like God he’s moving when you think nothing is happening.