Fall

“The leaves have all fallen. They fell like they were in love with the ground.”

                        -Andrea Gibson

 

Fall is my favorite season. That may be hard to believe, since I say the same thing about spring and summer, but something about watching the leaves change and fall makes me feel peaceful and content.

I am changing. I am purging my closets of things that, despite my best intentions, I have never worn. I am cleaning out drawers full of cards, of love letters, of the things I have held on to far too long. Preparing myself for peace corps means so much more than filing my visa; it is looking at my life and clearing out the excess. It is remembering that I do not have to own something to love it. Hard as it will be, beginning in December I will release my books, and then my pets, and finally my loved ones. There are ties that keep me connected to them, and there always will be. The hard part will be remembering that those ties of love will exist after I have gone.

I remember being in college and finding that my roommate had accidentally broken my dvd player. It had been a gift from my mother after a particularly trying part of our relationship, and I remembering receiving it with some surprise and thinking to myself “oh! She still loves me.” Despite our distance, that gift had been indicative of her continued love and capacity to forgive my prickly adolescence. Although I had long since stopped using it, I began crying. Calling my mom to tell her it had broken, she gently chided me “The dvd player is a thing. It doesn’t mean anything. The feelings I had giving it to you, the love and the connection, those things are what is important, and those things are always there.”

Whenever I think of the vast difference that will separate me from my loved ones in the coming years, I remember her telling me that. Their presence is important, but no matter where I go, that love and connection will still be there. I can travel around the world, and know they will be waiting for me when I come home.