If My Life Was a Novel . . .

. . . I think this would be one of my favorite chapters.


The dim light painted everything golden as I slid off the trampoline and landed on my toes. The ground was still too hard to trek barefoot, and the briers had just begun to creep up through the cracked soil. The careless attitude that springs so infectiously from summer evenings kept me from putting my shoes on all the way. I started toward the old fence, hardly aware of the pebbles that had already found their way into my undone sneakers.

Once I reached the fence, I turned and followed it towards the setting sun; when I was halfway, I stopped. I peered through the chain links, pressing my nose through to smell the fresh cut grass. It was silent, as always, but in a different way. Cemeteries sleep in fright, sorrow, and reverence, but today it slept in contentment. No one cried, and no empty holes yawned hungrily; a pinwheel stuck next to a tiny headstone spun in a breeze I couldn't feel.

I turned back to my side of the fence. Looking past the old saw, the neglected cars, to the westernmost side of the yard, I saw the pile of logs. They had lain in the same spot for years, outlasting time and tragedy. The three largest trunks had become smooth with age, and each had too many rings to count. Hundreds of dandelion mourners encircled the ancient wood, heads bowed forward. Tiny, white wildflowers sprouted at the base of the trees' resting spot as nature's tribute to the dead. When I turned my head, a deer grazing thirty feet away started and leaped across the field. As he jumped, the dandelions wept cottony tears and the crickets began to keen.

I looked up at the tall Birch above me, one of the 17 that lined the fence between the two graveyards. His new leaves quivered as the sun finally dipped below the horizon - a timid watchman!

I turned back to the house, following the fence again. It's comforting to know that on soft summer evenings, even death finds calm.