I raked leaves with my Dad today...
You see, Dad is someone you could describe in the common vernacular as "one leaf rakin' fool". As far back as I can remember he raked leaves, and, get this, he seemed to like it. When I was a kid he would ask me to come out and help him rake and I responded as most kids would.
I hated raking leaves. There were no touchdowns, home runs, cars, motorcycles or pretty girls involved with raking leaves. "What's the point?", I'd gripe. Leave them alone; in a year they'll be mulch. Entropy is a great thing.
However, as we raked he would talk about...stuff. All kinds of stuff. He would talk about where he grew up; I would gripe. Thoughts on rules for good living and how to be and act around others; I would gripe. Girls; I would gripe a little less. Little did I know then that this stuff was life-affirming, diamonds of wisdom gleaned from experience, the most important-kind-of-information-a-father-can-give-his-son kind of stuff. And I wasn't exactly taking notes.
After a while he would release me from my raking bondage and I'd run inside to continue more worthwhile endeavors like watching TV. Yeah, I know, TV...really? You have to remember that this was around 1970 B.C. Before Computers.
Now, where was I? Oh yeah, leaf rakin' fool.
Something that is important for you to understand at this point is that our home was in the middle of the desert in Northeast El Paso. That's in Texas. Way West Texas. Hot. Sandy. Got the picture? We had two trees in the backyard. Big trees, just two, great shade, and man those trees made a lot of leaves. So, I endured a lot of years of listening to stuff. Two trees should not, however, have been the catalyst for so much complaining on my part.
Fast forward about twenty years. My Dad buys almost an acre of ground in the Upper Valley of the Rio Grande near Canutillo, Texas. And get this: the lot has irrigation rights. Here's where you have to follow me closely. The algorithm goes something like this: big fertile lot-->free water from irrigation and high water table-->big, big trees grow-->many, many leaves grow-->many many leaves fall. Raking ensues. My Dad goes from a leaf rakin' fool to the Zen Master of Raking. I am now the son of the Zen Master of Raking.
However, good news for me at least, I have by this time kind of become an adult, so he doesn't have quite the power over me he used to, even with his Zen Powers. I am a doctor, after all, and I now have people who do these kinds of things for me. I call them Children. Five to be exact; a virtual landscaping crew who will work for food and electricity because there's a lot more than TV these days and so much of their lives revolve around the physics of the electron. It is now A.D. After Digital.
Also, by this time, I'd moved to Michigan; very beautiful, but lots of trees. Remember the algorithm? Lots of trees-->lots of leaves. Now, understand, raking leaves in the Upper Midwest is something of a chore for most of us living in the North Woods and it becomes a sign that marks the seasons, the seasons by which we plan our lives. Rainy season, mowing season, road work season, raking season, and so on, and so forth.
People talk all the time about the Magnificent Fall Colors of the beautiful North Woods, like it's some kind of mystical place, like Middle Earth. It's not. It's my front yard. And, usually, not a one of these people has a rake in his hands.
So, now I have my own acre of trees with their associated leaves. The Magnificent Fall Colors drop from countless limbs becoming a crunchy, psychedelic ground cover like a shag carpet in some 1970's frat-boy apartment. You're willing to walk on it, but you really don't want to touch it with your bare hands.
This is made worse by the fact that I am not the Zen Master of Raking, nor did I, apparently, inherit the appropriate genes. The problem is compounded by the fact that the damn leaves don't fall all at once; they take their sweet time and can ruin a month's worth of weekends starting each October. However, if you procrastinate long enough it will eventually snow, and the leaves will magically disappear. It's an out of sight out of mind kind of thing. Many people live their lives this way: if they can't see it, it doesn't exist. Convenient. Leaves do this to people.
Now, because I had had a bad experience with leaves when I was younger, I really did not like them much now that I was older. Actually, I almost hated raking season. I attacked leaves with a veritable army of tractors, lawn sweepers, chipper/shredders, gas powered lawn vacuums and blowers. I'm sure the Zen Master would be appalled at the carbon footprint I left simply by my management of leaves. But even with this collection of machinery burning every kind of petroleum product known to man, I still needed to use a rake to gather those leaves that would escape. With rakes in hand, my family and I would scratch up leaves under trees and around bushes, out of ditches and even off of the eaves. And as we raked we talked about...stuff. I talked about where I grew up, how to act and be around people, girl and boy stuff. The landscaping crew griped, but they also talked and I kind of enjoyed hearing about their lives. Things I didn't hear about with the mowers, shredders, chippers, and blowers operating at their collective decibels. And, as we raked, I thought about Dad; nice thoughts.
Through the years, when we visited back home, we'd all rake together with Dad. No gas powered anything...but there was a cacophony of sounds from my children laughing and shouting, and the crackling, crunching noise made when kids jumped from decks into great mountains of leaves. They were Hobbitts. It was Middle Earth.
I still don't like leaves, but I'm learning not to hate them.
Time passes. Seasons come and go. Time is kept by the falling of leaves. First, as buds in the Spring, next great and large and green, washed by Summer showers. Then the inevitable burst of magnificent color just before being dropped by their branches to the ground and the soon to be sounds of small horsepower engines running throughout the neighborhood.
Then Dad had a stroke. Left side, meaning right side of the brain, left side of the body. He bounced back with only a few deficits; some weakness on the left side with that tell-tale flexed arm and foot dragged just a little behind the rest of his body. Even then he raked. With his trusty rake in his good hand he learned to use the gravity of his weak and heavy hand as a counterweight to move the tines back and forth. His stance was skewed and his gait was awkward, but he raked. The Zen Master of Raking became the Raker Emeritus.
The years, and a few smaller strokes, TIA's they're called, all take their toll. He raked with a rake in one hand and a cane in the other; then with a rake in just one hand because his other hand couldn't even hold a cane.
As my children got older, one by one, they went off to colleges where someone else raked the leaves. Life goes around, a circle as they say, and it's Dad and me again.
So, now when we go home my wife and I help Dad rake his leaves. During our last visit, after helping him rake up all his leaves into neat, seperate piles, I announced that it was time for us to go. My wife tried to talk me into staying to help bag the leaves, but I deferred, citing the obvious, that we were, after all, on vacation and had other places to be, and other things to do. (Remember, like when I was a kid? Sometimes you just never learn). Besides, he enjoyed raking and bagging his leaves, right?
Dad died just a few months after that last trip home, after that time I didn't help him bag what would be his last raking of the leaves. You'd think I'd feel like a real jerk for not having helped him bag his last batch of leaves. Actually, I feel worse.
I feel like I lost the most valuable, last-in-a-life-time opportunity to spend one more season talking to him about nothing and everything, looking into his blue eyes and just smiling at the thought of us both being young again. But I let that opportunity slip through my fingers and Time. Time I'll never get back.
Regrets? Just add this one to the list.
I was at his bedside at his home before he died, and as he was laying there, I took a few minutes to go outside and rake leaves with him. Leaves he would never get to. I used his rake and I imagined my hands on his hands. It's hard to see leaves through heavy tears. When I was done I went back inside and laid by his side and whispered that the leaves were done and that he could go now.
Looking back I wonder if it wasn't so much that he liked raking leaves as much as he liked raking leaves with me. Dads are like that, a little sneaky, I mean. Always trying to find a way to spend more time with you, to talk to you, to show you they love you as if feeding, clothing, educating, protecting, and putting a roof over your head all by working 12 hours a day wasn't enough. I'd give anything to rake a football field of leaves with him right now.
Thanks, Dad.
In a quote from one of my favorite books a man says, "from birth 'til death, we travel between the Eternities". For me, a few times from birth 'til death I got to rake leaves with my Dad. I'll look for him in the Eternities and hope there are Seasons in Heaven.
Is there a moral to this story? I wouldn't presume to tell you what all this should mean to you. But, Time in this life is finite. Every second that ticks is gone. If there is someone in your life who would be willing to rake leaves just to spend time with you, I'd take advantage of it and not waste the opportunity. When they leave, I guarantee you'd wish you had.
Funny, I have a really strong desire to talk about stuff with my kids right now.
William Wayne Ayer
Born
March 6, 1934
Stopped Raking
December 19, 2013
