Snapshots of a Modest Life

Autumn has arrived in central Florida! As I sit here at my computer I take frequent glances over my left shoulder and out the sliding glass door at the beauty that nature has to offer. It's January and some leaves have fallen off the trees. Others still hang by a twig blowing gently in the frigid breeze. Out the door I can see my mom's dead tomato plants in our brown garden, and a tree full of red leaves in the distance. I love fall, it was always my favorite season when I was little, even if I vowed that it was summer because I got to wear shorts. We lived in Virginia where fall lasts for a month, and winter follows slowly on its heals. My brothers and I used to make forts out of the red, yellow, orange and brown leaves that would fall every second week of September. We called them forts, but really they were just leaves raked into lines to make an outer wall that wouldn't stop a strong wind. When we got sick of that we would rake all of our hard work back into a pile and jump into the mountain of leaves, roll around, then fall out of it covered from head to toe with leaves. We would tramp inside, making a trail of crumpled leaves through my mom's kitchen and up the stairs. Sometimes our dog would follow us into the house which always gave us great joy because he would hit the linoleum floor in the kitchen and go sliding across it into the cast iron radiator on the far side, at which point he would make an "ooph" sound, turn and run the other way, skidding around corners as he followed us wherever we went. He never was a very bright dog, but he was good...he always knew what I was feeling. If I was sad he'd lick my face and and make me smile, if I was happy he would bounce around me wagging his tail, and if I was just fine he would run all over the place, cause he knew I didn't need him. He's dead now, we had to put him to sleep a couple of years ago, but he's in a better place.