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Mum's first winter away from Bahamaland - Sat Oct 30, 2004

The sun don't want to shine no more, and winter's almost here. This will be Mum's first winter away from Bahamaland.

She has never experienced the changing of the seasons. On her morning walk to Miss Knowlton's place, she walks up the laneway and road. The laneway lined by 300 year old maple trees, so wide around that two people can barely touch arms around the tree.

When Jack Frost started to make the nights chilly, the leaves started to change colour from their deep hunter green to yellow, orange, crimson and scarlet. Mum had never seen this before. On her morning walks she would pick up a pretty leaf to save. Miss Knowlton showed her how to preserve the leaf by ironing it between two sheets of wax paper. The wax transfers itself onto the leaf and coats it and preserves it.

The funny part is that I have been in Mum's room twice this month. The first was to close and lock the double storm windows in preparation for the cold. On Mum's bedside table was her black prayer book or bible, and I could see a few pretty maple leaves tucked between the pages. A week later, I went into her room again to vacuum the furnace ducts before I turned on the heat for the cold nights. Mums' black bible was totally bulging with pretty, preserved maple leaves of yellows, and scarlets and orange and crimson.

This weekend, a magical event happened. The trees just give up holding their leaves. One hour you have a majestic tree with tens of thousands of leaves, and sixty minutes later the leaves are falling like crazy. Another hour later, the tree is just bare bones. There is over a foot of leaves on the ground. Mum went outside just to marvel at the site and walk in the rustling leaves. The dogs had a ball running and jumping in the newly fallen carpet. There were so many pretty leaves, that Mum just gave up collecting them. The sight of millions of them on the road and on the ground, and covering the lawns to the depth of a foot made her give up leaf collecting. There was just too many.

I just went to replace a light bulb in Mum's room. The black bible is where it should be on the night table. There isn't a single leaf in between any of its pages. I saw Mum tucking the last one into an envelope to send back to her friend in Freeport.

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