Our Summer/Fall WIR guest contest judge Susan Bono awarded first place to Sher Laughlin’s essay. Susan enjoyed the essay’s “many layers of emotion and craft.” She wrote that the essay “employed great use of scene, dialog, imagery/symbolism and moved effortlessly between the tension of the unfolding incident and the narrator’s ever-expanding drama, realizations about beginnings and endings, holding on and letting go.”  “I was deeply moved by the risks this writer took,” Susan wrote, “the metaphorical leaps between herself and her autumn garden, the way she captures her daughter’s youth and her own sense of encroaching age. This essay gives me an afternoon captured, but also a sense of the life lived before and after the picture was snapped. Lovely.”

I Know How the Wild Goose Feels
By Sher Laughlin

They say perfect conditions for fall color come every ten years here on the prairie. This is that year. The September sun saturates my kitchen with the promise of autumn as I stand at the window and lose myself in the drifts of ruby sumac and the viburnum so scarlet they rival the burning bushes.

Even the little tree we planted just five years ago billows crimson and apricot, stretching to fill my view. It is a survivor, this little tree, this native of Siberia. We call it Allie’s Tree. 

I wait for Allie to come home from Kayley’s house, eager to plan this high season with my daughter. It is our season, our time to connect with each other before the earth sleeps. In this season, we choose pumpkins for our porch. We sip early morning coffee with our apple donuts at the orchard. We hike the walking trail where the lemon canopy drops its leaves for our autumn display at home.

As I wait, I watch summer end through my kitchen window. I am on the cusp of autumn.

On the deck, five potted tomato plants wheeze and rattle after last night’s early frost. They cling to their wire cages as if their will to live could stop the turn of the season. Next to the dying Jet Stars and Sweet 100’s, planters of herbs and parsley and chard persist in their pots even though the season is changing. In their middle age they do not acknowledge the passing of youth. Life still flows through their stalks.

Like the chard, I find life in my stalks. Even though I sag and wrinkle, I preen. Alone in my kitchen, I admire my face in the toaster as if I were firm, fit and twenty. I cannot help myself. I grin with anticipation.

I try for nonchalance. But when Allie opens the door and I open my arms for a hug, my grin cracks through.

My thirteen-year-old daughter, though, scowls her way past me and opens the fridge. She cocks a newly-curved hip, bundles her gleaming dark hair into a ponytail then lets it loose again. She pulls a cheese stick out of the drawer and regards my hopeful smile.

“Uhhh….” Contempt skulks in the dull whine of that single syllable.

“What.” I know better, but I engage her contempt.

“Don’t you think you should dye your hair or something…”

Never has a killing frost laid a garden so low.

I do not touch my hair nor check my reflection in the toaster. But neither do I meet her eyes. Instead, I wipe imaginary frost from the chrome just as she has wiped the grin from my face. In an instant, the season turns. I cling to my cage as if by my very will I can deny the inevitable. Winter is coming. I am not prepared.

Like a runway model, Allie glides back to her bedroom, careful not to move her head or shoulders. She shuts her door while I lean against the kitchen sink, now aware my thighs rub together, my knees ache and my hands look like my mothers’, wrinkled and spotted.

I turn back to the maple flaming in the falling sun.

The day we chose Allie’s Tree, she handed the nurseryman the delivery tag filled out with her perfect and studied printing. She had adopted, named and would soon plant this Amur Maple in commemoration of her own Adoption Day. Together, we dug the planting hole and set the sapling in the dirt to put down roots as we watered and mulched, applied B12 and worried over the spindly branches.

The branches now stand sturdy. The red birdhouse no longer looks ridiculous. The tree is stout enough to support it. Yet still I stake the trunk against summer storms and winter ice, knowing one day I will remove the support. But not now. I am not ready.

The sun melts the horizon now, and I head for Allie’s Tree to lie beneath the autumn branches. Like their namesake, the leaves are finding their color. They will stay with their tree for a while longer, acquiring their glory still attached to the branch, and I find comfort in that. I find comfort in this season, even though it will pass.

I hear them before I see them, geese rehearsing in the late afternoon sky. Unprepared, straggling, they true up their V for another run. Many will stay through the winter in heated ponds. But others will migrate south.

I know how the migrating geese must feel. My pond is cooling. It is time to migrate to a warmer place. Today I begin the struggle to V-up, flapping toward the next great migration, knowing I must follow the change, wishing I could prolong the inevitable.

I can’t believe I must let go, here in this autumn when the leaves are just so beautiful. I can’t believe it might be time to remove the stake and let the Amur Maple stand on its own against the winter ice.

I can’t believe my daughter is separating.

“Mom?” Allie stands over me with remorse in her eyes, tears that spill to my cheek. She is, after all, a gentle soul and does not mean to hurt with her careless words.

I reach out my arms, and she snuggles her new curves into my middle-aged ones. I wrap my branches around her, sinking my roots into the ground. I want to call the birds and butterflies to my sturdy trunk so she will stay and watch the colors with me.

“… I love you,” she says, squeezing my arm then gliding away, back into her life.

Overhead, a lone goose honks. It searches for a V of its own.

And now I know what I must do on this first day of my autumn. Under the sherbet sky, I head off by myself for the farmer’s stand to find pumpkins for my porch.