On Monday, after work, I pull on a light T-shirt and capris, and I go out to rake one-half of the front lawn. It is seventy degrees out, and sunny, and I am hot by the time I've raked a good part of the lawn half. The leaf are crisp, and little white midges---or SOME kind of bug---swirl up from the grass where the rakes upset them.

I rake the leaves down over the little retaining wall, and then I run down the two steps to the street. I use the rake like a shovel, heaping leaf piles, making sure they are, at least for a moment, all piled up on the hell strip.

Tuesday's weather is much the same. My cheeks feel a little sun-toasted. I notice the leaf-sucker has been by; all the leaves from the right side of the front yard have been snuffled up, carried away.

I use the rake to wiggle leaves out from under bushes and up and over the rocks between my yard and Sandy's. I clean out a column of yard, pushing leaves into a wavery line; then I go around on the other side and do the same thing.

When there's pretty green space all along that avering line of leaves, I start at the top—up close to the house,--and I push and rake and bulldoze those leaves down to the curb.

These are neighbor-leaves, the bounty of a beautiful neighborhood filled with shade trees. When they splay onto the concrete, they make a lovely collage—oak leaves and maple leaves; little yellow oval leaves with pointy tips. Sweet gum leaves.

Some leaves crisp and flake as I rake them. Others are as tough as vintage leather.

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On Wednesday, I run the mower in the backyard, chewing up pine needles that spread, golden, everywhere. Piney scent hangs in the air, dense and Christmassy.

Once again, the leaf sucker has made away with the piles at the curb.

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When I go out to rake on Thursday afternoon, I wear my jacket. A little rain has scampered through town, and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. But the sun shines pale when I start, again, to clear those wandering leaves nestled on my lawn. This year, I vow, I am going to keep on top of the leaf situation; this year, I'm going to get them to the curb to be sucked away before the wind takes them and scatters them in yards that are innocent of trees.

These particular leaves may not originate in my yards, but my sweet gum is waiting, still mostly green, breath held. It will let Sandy's trees shed completely; it will let the neighborhood clean itself up. It will wait until the leaf sucker has decided, "I don't need to make any more runs!"

And then the sweet gum will start, sassy and lazy, to drop its leaves. And the wind will pick them up and sprinkle them, judiciously dividing them up among neighboring yards.

That can go on until Christmas; the sweet gum is big and it's loaded with leaves and it is slow—so slow—to let them go.

So I build a daily practice, do penance beforehand for my messy tree, send as many leaves as I can off to Leaf Sucker Land.

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In other years, more recent ones, I have not raked this much. I pulled the mower out and mulched leaves into great piles, and breezes ruffled that mulchiness gleefully and scattered it, but the mulch didn't deface lawns like big chunky leaves do. Sometimes I would get the rake out and Mark would plug the leaf blower in, and we would tag team the front yard, working quickly, our minds set on just getting 'er done.

Now I am leaf-raking-mindful. After the rain, when the temps drop, the scents of fall change. There is a musty leaf smell, and the rich earthy tones of the dirt. The sun breaks through the cloud bank, and I am immediately cheered.

The clouds close ranks again, the sky darkens ominously, and worry wiggles around the back of my neck.

"Powerful thunderstorms" the weather app warns.

I want those clear green patches—even knowing that, by this time tomorrow, more merry little leaf-pranksters will have raced to fill the vacuum that nature abhors. A person riding by wouldn't say, "Gosh, she's keeping up with raking, isn't she?"

No, they'd say, "The leaves are really coming down now," instead.

But I don't care. I am driven to rake this year, and I am finding out a surprising truth-for-me: raking leaves makes the whole adventure of autumn more intense.

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The act of raking calls up memories.

I am three and dressed in flannel-lined blue jeans, folded up at the cuff, and a long sleeved, striped T-shirt. All of those are hand-me-downs from older brothers, but the Red Riding Hood cape is all mine. It has a hood I keep perched on my head, covering the tightly wrought French braids, but not obscuring the short, short bangs on my forehead.

(Once, after she died, I found a cache of special cards my mother saved. Among them was a Hallmark card I gave her, probably in my young twenties. The cover said something like, "Happy birthday, Mom! I appreciate all the great things you do…"

And when I opened it, I read this, "…and I forgive you for all the times you cut my bangs too short.")

At three, I like jumping and crunching through piles of leaves in my Red Riding Hood cape, pretending I'm on my way to Grandma's, pretending that I will vanquish that dreadful wolf. Someone takes my picture on the sidewalk next to the school I will attend. Great piles of leaves have blown off the retaining wall, and I am buried up to my shoulders in leaves, only my red-hooded head sticking out. I am grinning like a junior maniac.

I have the picture in an album. It is hard for me to sort the memory from the knowledge of the black and white photo, with its date stamp and crinkled white edges.

Do I remember this time in the leaves, or does the picture give me the knowledge I wish I could claim as memory?

A little bit of both maybe. And a little reminder, to me, how important leaves are to fall.

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I remember 'helping' rake the leaves at home. I remember jumping in the leaf piles; I remember when the work had to be done all over again.

I remember being at the mercy of the leaf sucker schedule at several homes where we lived along the way…and my neighbor Rosie pounding on the back door in Mount Vernon.

"They're up the street!" she yelled, and I ran out and grabbed the rake; Rosie wielded hers, and we both raked energetically, shooting great piles of leaves toward the street.

Rosie was eighty-something at the time, and I was hard-pressed to keep up. We cleared an amazing number of leaves before the hungry machine lumbered to my curb and snuffled up the fresh foliage dunes we'd create—the leaves still quivering and settling.

And I remember Rosie shrugging off my thank you's with a grin and a wave.

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The weather cools after a long, warm fall. The furnace kicks on one night.

I cook pots of chili and minestrone. We peel apples and chop them into the crockpot with butter and brown sugar and cinnamon and come home to a house scented with hot applesauce. This is part of Fall, too: the urge to turn the harvest into food for now, and food that will last..food that will nourish us through the winter.

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We check outdoor clothes. A new pair of ankle boots with furry cuffs arrive in a smiling box. Coats hang ready in the back hall closet, plastic peeled away. I wash and dry the gloves and hats and knitted scarves and bring them all upstairs.

Some mornings now, I pull the thin gloves on my hands to talk my walk.

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But the walking gets later and later. Now the sun rises at 7:45 a.m.; now if I take a morning walk in the light, I am rushing to be at work at 9:00.

One day I bow to the inevitable and go to the gym and re-up our memberships.

Now I can creep out to the car in the early dark morning and drive to the gym. I can walk on the indoor track, then pump my arms and legs on the elliptical, moving the day forward, walking into the light.

It grows light later; night falls earlier.

Is that why we call this season 'fall,' I wonder. And Dictionary.com tells me it is for the obvious reason---that leaves, in autumn, fall from deciduous tree—just as, in spring, shoots and stems and furry, fuzzy-eyed baby spring forth.

In autumn, night falls earlier. Rain falls more often. And leaves fall, fall and bluster, playing with the wind, sheltering in the nooks and crannies of my yard.

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It is a season of falling things, but not all falls are negative. There is falling in love, after all, and there is another wonderful kind of falling—falling into a reverie, one that transports and refreshes. These cool, gray days are perfect for fascinating reveries, for long descents into deep thoughts.

I want to feel the pulse and the meaning of this season, to participate in all of its preparations and rituals.

I want to be aware of the changes, to be there as they happen.

So this year, this fall, I am raking leaves.

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https://www.dictionary.com/e/fall/

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