The Yellow Leaf

In August, every now and then I’m startled by the sight of a yellow leaf. It always seems too soon, and takes me by surprise.

It seems to signify the end of something big.

I try not to get caught up in a whelm of nostalgia. But in August I can’t seem to help it. There’s something about the sighing breeze that feels different now. There’s a new kind of quiet around, broken only by the sound of my children packing boxes to leave home.

There have been so many summers in my life.

There were the summers growing up in England. We spent most of August in Ashdown Forest, with the ghosts of Winnie-the-Pooh, and with W.B. Yeats, who had honeymooned there. We would play, explore, follow the stream to its source, climb trees, seek and hide and seek. How it was that we never got lost, or lost each other? We never did, back then.

More exotic Augusts: on the west coast of Ireland, with bonfires on the beach, and swimming in the surprisingly warm Atlantic Ocean under a full moon, and being kissed for the first time.

Or cruising up to the Arctic Circle and exploring fjord after fjord and thinking I was going to the ends of the earth to be so far north, and with so much light around.

Living high up in the Greek mountains there were always intense thunderstorms in August. The little house where we lived would shake and tremble and the sky lit up again and again, as though with excitement. Ominous: summer was coming to an end. What was next?

Most of all I remember New York City in the summer when I was in my twenties. Maybe we didn’t see many stars, but the stars were all around us, in the lights of the city, the clubs, the music, the stars in his eyes, and in mine. That was the decade of love, after meeting and before marrying; and I know there were autumns, and winters, and springs, but when I go back to those early years together I think mostly of summer.

When we first moved to the Berkshires with our young children I’ll never forget the fireflies – sometimes it felt that our garden was alive with them. But there were fewer and fewer in August.

That felt as ominous as the Greek thunder.

Each August I knew the voyage would soon be over. Or that a childhood adventure was ending. Or that bliss of love had to become grounded.

In August it was always time to move on.

But this is the first time that August feels different. That’s why I’m startled by the small yellow leaf. I’m not moving on – my children are. The Greek thunderstorms and the dying fireflies pale in significance.