Fall Was Yelling at Me
It poured. In California. In early September. So, after the rain, Ghost and I took a ten-minute stroll down the driveway to see what had happened. Apparently Fall was tired of waiting for me to notice.
The first thing I saw was the color. Wet leaves were turning red, fallen madrone leaves covered the ground, and the moss on the trees was almost fluorescent green. But what stopped me wasn't something I saw.
It was the smell.
Sunday morning, my friend Casey said something I couldn't stop thinking about: “What a privilege it is to be right here, right now.” She invited us to look back five years and remember who we were, where we were and what we were facing.
So I did.
Five years ago, I was fighting for my life. I had woken up with broken ears. The noise inside my head was overwhelming, ordinary sounds hurt and loud sounds were impossibly painful. I didn't know whether I could go on living that way. My world had become very small.
And then, this week, I realized something that stopped me in my tracks.
My life, right now, is exactly the miracle life I prayed for.
My bad ears didn't magically become perfect. I still don't hear normally. Noise can still hurt, and I still wear noise-canceling headphones when I need them. Except these days, I decorate them with flowers. 😊
My ear is still part of my daily life. It just isn't all of my life anymore.
I hike. I laugh. I write. I love people. I notice hearts in trees and deer peeking through the brush. I make things. I help where I can. I wake up curious about what the day might bring.
Healed doesn't always mean restored to exactly who we were before. Sometimes healed means discovering that life became whole again in a different way.
That idea kept following me around this week.
First, of all things, it arrived in a fortune cookie: “Wednesday will be the day to express gratitude for the blessings in your life.”
Apparently, the universe has put me on a schedule. Wednesday: gratitude. Got it. 😂
Then Fall started shouting at me.
It poured here in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Afterward, Ghost and I walked about ten minutes down our driveway. Wet leaves were turning red. Madrone leaves covered the ground. Moss on the trees seemed almost fluorescent green. Three little deer wandered among the fallen leaves, and clouds were breaking apart over Silicon Valley.
But what I remember most is the smell. Wet earth. Damp leaves. That unmistakable scent that somehow carries memories of campfires and crackling leaves and says autumn before the calendar does.
Ten minutes. Down my own driveway.
What a privilege to still be here. To experience just this.
And then something else happened. I shared Casey's five-year exercise with a young woman I coach. She has just entered a Master's program. Five years ago, she was a college freshman who was afraid of the whole world. She looked back and realized how far she had come, too.
Casey helped me see my miracle. I passed her idea along, and someone else got to see hers.
Maybe gratitude isn't only noticing what's good today. Sometimes gratitude asks us to turn around and look at the road behind us.
Think about who you were five years ago. What frightened you? What were you hoping for? What seemed impossible? What have you survived, learned, changed, built, released or become?
Then look at yourself right here, right now.
You may discover that you're already standing inside the miracle you once prayed for.
What a privilege it is to be here.
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