My 60th Autumn

I saw a boy raking leaves today. He was outside my window in the next yard raking the silver maple and the elm and the pine needles pushed themselves up against the straight and bent metal of the rake tearing the brittled, mottled leaves. I watched him there a long time. Once he looked up and saw me watching him. The boy waved and I waved back but I don’t think he could tell.  The wind nestled itself against the house, pushed and pulled the leaves from the tidy piles the boy raked. I tried to open the window with my right arm to smell the damp and dead summer but I couldn’t do it. I tried to move my chair closer to the wall but the length of the chrome arm kept me from the leverage I needed. I called to my husband. He was in the kitchen I think because he didn’t respond. I tried the window again and it gave just enough. My long unused aluminum cane was in arm’s reach.  I wedged the rubbered end of it between the sill and the bottom of the window. I pushed down and the 45-degree angle eased the window up and open.  My nostrils pulsed. I breathed long and deep.

I wondered what the boy would think if he could see through the wall.  If he wondered why I didn’t rake my own leaves. If he wondered why he rarely saw me except through my window. He would walk and run and skip and jump up the back walkway Monday through Friday after school ended. A polite boy. A caring boy. He always waved and I did too. My eyesight hadn’t failed and I could always see him glance to the left at the wooden planks that anchored themselves at varying angles up to the back door.  A child would fancy a sleek chromed chair with two large wheels on either side, a thing for adventure, for daring. I imagined he saw himself racing in my chair down the two-tired ramp a smile crowing his achievement, an imaginary trophy in his empty hand.  Aren’t all achievements forgotten? Don’t we just relish those that happen in the moment? An ephemeral victory.  The boy couldn’t know and will never know my achievement was opening my window today.

I closed my eyes and could still see his small frame moving like a miniature grandfather clock. How did God figure into making things move? The boy, the leaves, the air we breathe? The muscle to move the rake, the smile that begged for something, a hand thrust upward moving back and forth, back and forth… An ache in the throat, a tear in the ear, a sound through an empty house to an empty kitchen. He made these things move and he made things unmovable. Legs. Arms. Hearts. Movement is sacred, and I have sinned.