GOLDEN LEAVES

BY DEBBIE HEWSON

The leaves were golden brown and orange, pushed by the wind into piles, and lying thick on the woodland floor.  They walked through the quiet afternoon, the chill seeping into their hands and feet, and making their cheeks glow.  The two little boys ran through the woods, pretending to shoot each other from behind trees, laughing and throwing leaves at each other, filling the quiet afternoon with their happy noise and bustle.  

The sun was low in the sky when they walked back through the gathering dusk to the house, where there was hot chocolate to drink, and dinner to eat, and then blankets and cuddles on the sofa in front of a favourite movie.  

They did it every weekend.  It was their thing.  Sunday afternoon at three.  Sometimes, when their Daddy was at home, they all went. In the summer they ran in shorts and t-shirts.  In the spring they walked past the fields where lambs played, and in winter they ran through the frosts and sometimes the snow.  In autumn, though, when the leaves were thick, and the air was cold, it was the best of times.  

Later when they were older, they walked, sometimes talking, sometimes in silence, but they still walked together.  They spent the time together, and often it was the best time to thrash out things that might have grown into an argument at home, here in the woods they found the space to talk things out.  Even later, they went away, to study, and came home in the holidays to walk and tell her about the new friends, the new life, and the things that they were learning.  She noticed there were more gaps.  Pieces of their lives they kept to themselves, and that was the way of the world, but she felt the space which grew between them.

While they were gone, she walked with their Dad.  Together they rekindled that part of their life which had been going on in the background, the spaces which the children had filled, and then emptied when they left to live their own lives, in which their parents were less and less involved.  

The days she spent, walking through the woods were happy, and she remembered her children chasing each other through the trees.  She shared hot chocolate with her husband, and long-distance phone calls with her sons.  

When her sons brought home girlfriends, she smiled, and welcomed with open arms, some she liked, some less so.  It made no difference, they would choose who to spend their lives with, and that was exactly as it should be.  Whether she liked them or not was irrelevant.  Each year that passed brought a different girl, for each of them, until they found people that they truly loved. 

There were weddings.  She bought the right dress, for each one, and watched her beautiful sons become someone else’s life.  She held tight to her husband and smiled in the photographs that they would hang in silver frames, to remind them of the day, and of the family that she had helped to grow.  

When grandchildren started to arrive, she took them with her when they visited, through the woods, lifting them onto the fence to wave at the lambs, and pushing through the leaves and home for hot chocolate and warm blankets.  When they were far away, she walked with her husband, until he got less strong, and one day he stayed asleep, no matter how hard she tried to wake him.

Slowly, she fought her way back from the sadness that engulfed her.  She walked alone through the woods that she had loved all her life.  She walked through the cold bare trees, trimmed with the thick white frost. She saw the trees push out their leaves in the spring, and the lush green in the summer, when the leaves began to turn colour and drift down from the branches, she walked, remembering the days when they were a family, and when three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon meant wrapping up in coats and scarves and heading out to the woods.  

It was five to three on Sunday, and she already had her coat on, when their cars pulled onto the drive.  Both families spilling out.  She was pleased to see them, of course she was, and she pulled her coat off and wrapped the grandchildren in hugs and was surrounded by her family.  Her two daughters-in-law, unloaded the cars, and went to the kitchen, shooing her, and her sons, and her grandsons out.  They helped her into her coat, and walked to the woods.  Her sons walked with her, while the children ran ahead, pretending to shoot each other from behind the trees.  Screaming their joy and freedom.  It was cold and crisp, and her cheeks were soon pink, and her hands and feet felt the chill.  They talked about everything, and nothing, and she was back to where she had always wanted to be.  The space that had been had diminished and they were back with her, laughing and teasing each other, and telling her about their lives and what was happening with them again.

Heading back down the hill towards a dinner cooked and waiting, and mugs of hot chocolate was the perfect end, to a perfect day, a life filled with memories, and with a future to make more.  

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