All the Leaves are Brown and the Sky is Blue

Florida Dreaming

This is the view out my front door when I open it at 6am to let Olivia, my aged yellow lab, out to pee.  In three weeks and three days it will officially be winter.  But the freeze has already descended in New England. The surrounding trees have shed their leaves, blown from the lawn and gardens into the woods.  The evergreens remain with most of their needles tree-bound but the rest of the forest soldiers are pretty much naked.  Wooden skeletons ready for the season.  I am always torn this time of the year.  We are packing over the next few days and heading to Florida.  The Sunshine State.  And I love warm weather but Maine is my home.  I am lucky, no doubt, and stop whining you fortunate person with Champagne problems, but leaving friends and family and my home and naked winter trees is hard for me.  I will miss the cracking and snapping of the fire in my wood stove, my four-layered winter coat and those fleece-lined eggplant-colored gloves I bought on sale.  Last winter in the warmth of a Florida December my neighbor unexpectedly died. All winter long I looked out the front door past the palm trees and missed Dennis who loved hot-rod cars, yelling across the street to my husband in a slow southern drawl, "Hey there Keeeeeeen." My father-in-law died in February, breaking everybody's heart as the pandemic roared and we all feared gathering to mourn.  My sister, crazy catfishing-addicted sister, got lymphoma in March right after we got her financially stable.  She survived, but it was a tough winter and my stomach let me know.  This past summer and fall have followed the same exhausting trend with a husband who went to Brazil and caught COVID,  tenants who wouldn't leave a rental involving expensive lawyers, hurricane Ian which trashed our house in Florida and still needs repairs, brakes on my ancient car that started grinding like a giant moaning for help from my back right wheel, tons of routine medical appointments and restless waits for fortunately mostly healthy results, flashes of light in my left eyeball which turned out to be normal, news my husband had been possibly exposed to agent orange while serving in Guam, my dog coming to the end of her life and wobbling on 100-year old legs, a bathroom renovation that is never-ending and going on seven months, two apartment renovations that cost twice as much as expected and involved an idiot contractor who had to be fired.  It's been a tough year.  And yet, I know it could be worse.  I am blessed with health, love, and enough money to not have to beg on the street.  I look at my beloved New England woods that surround my home as my dog pees and I sip hot coffee.  I breath in the cool, dry air and grin as it tickles my nose and makes me happy I'm wearing pink fuzzy slippers.  I say a little prayer for inner strength.  Strength to face an upcoming year hopefully full of health, tenants who pay their rent on time, people who stay alive, and sunshine.  Lots of sunshine.  And strength to face whatever unexpected events will rear their heads and force me to pay attention in a world that feels like it's on fire and near hell so much of the time.  Hopefully peace is more near than war.  I do feel that in my soul as I wonder at the behemoths right in front of me reaching up and into the air and all around.  The forest encircling that makes me feel the comfort of a wood nymph at home and free.  Safe and satisfied.  Lush green leaves will return next spring and I will dance to their tune as the warm weather winds gently blow.  But for now, I will pack up and head south with my husband and dog, like the flock of Canadian geese I just heard, honking and jockying in formation across the light blue expanse of a cloudless late November sky. Just a little Florida dreaming.....