Bottoms of Leaves

My eyes have always wandered when I think. Right now they’re drawn to the soft light of day, where a sliver of window is bordered by thickly embroidered curtains that have hung here for years, relentlessly beautiful. They’re a work of art, really, and yet they disappear alongside the wild way the leaves of the mulberry tree—and the tulip tree behind it—wave in the gentlest of breezes.

I can’t peel away—the absolute firmness of the elderly tulip tree trunk, vines growing up it, and limbs that have found their way, holding pliable branches that do as they please. The sun is choosy about which leaves it turns golden-green, then it goes, then it returns. The glimpses of sky are white, blinding, and I know with my light eyes not to watch for too long, or else the doppled white pattern will singe into my vision for the next ten minutes.

Most remarkable out there are the flopping leaves, showing their pale undersides, the most free things imaginable. As a child I tagged along with my brother to boy scout camp, and I learned a few tricks for sensing rain. You see the leaves. You notice when the gusts take on a pattern that shows the bottoms of leaves. You’ll know that rain is on its way.

Decades later, I will say, this is incorrect most of the time.

I wish I could visualize the face of the adult who shared the “bottoms of leaves” with the group. I wish I could say, I’m older now, you can tell me more, I’m listening. I wish to know what that person knew. I wish I could see the faces of the others in the boy scout group, with the ones who still remember this lesson illuminated. I wish we could laugh. I wonder if they feel wronged by this lesson.

I wonder what I’ve told my children, and how many decades it’ll take them to feel wronged by it. I want their faces as they are now to be illuminated. I want the sun to choose them, and when it goes, I want it to return to them again. When I think now about all the things I want, I realize I’ve been misguided, I realize I don’t want anything at all, except for the sun on their faces, and when it goes, my only wish in the world is for it to return to them again.

☆