Leaves in the Sidewalk

I had just started out on my morning walk (a new routine this month) when I crossed the street to find something I'd never seen before.

I've walked this neighborhood many times before, and perhaps I had seen it but I had never noticed that in certain sections of the sidewalk there were imprints of leaves.

I'm always fascinated by initials or handprints left in the sidewalk from when the concrete was poured. Who were these people? What were they intending when they left their mark? Where are they now?

But I hadn't ever noticed how nature had left a mark on a human-made endeavor.

I stopped for amount to admire the freshly fallen leaves that also aligned the sidewalk next to their fossilized relatives.

It made me think about the continuous cycle of permanence and importance. The remnants of leaves all ago fallen were memorized in the sidewalk, though they were for sure already disintegrated, turned to soil, swept away, or whatever else befalls the fate of oak leaves in Florida. Next them lay leaves who were still in the leaf stage of their life cycle facing their eventual fate.

This felt especially poignant at this moment in my life. Two years after the sudden loss of my Dad, now 6 months after ending a decade-long relationship, embarking on a new relationship, and still living in the same house as always, walking the same streets. My life is at once completely different but still the same. My body is changing, but it's still my body. My home is going through it's own evolution, but the sweet names are still the same, my address remains unchanged.

We come to believe that some things are permanent and life shows us otherwise. In the end it all falls away, but some of our lives get imprinted in concrete. But even that, at some point will erode, break, get repaved.

What the seasons don't teach us each year, the decades will. It's up to us to find what really important and hold tight to that, remaining open to allowing even that to fall away. This is how we make room, for ourselves and each other.