Golden

It rained all day, the kind of driving rain that forms puddles quickly and makes my front yard look like a cool place to fish. The sky was grey, as the skies here generally are in the late fall, and dark. I had errands to run. I drove Shaggy Hair Boy into the city to take his road test; I stood in the pouring rain for fifteen minutes while he took the test. I drove to the post office to pick up a package that had come for With-a-Why, only to find our little post office had closed for lunch. I went into campus to copy materials I needed for class.

Despite the grey skies and rain, the landscape I drove through was glowing yellow. Golden leaves hung from trees, blew across the road, spread wetly across lawns. I stopped on my second trip to the post office to snap a photo of one house that was completely surrounded by yellow leaves.

I had to wait at the post office — the postmaster had left a sign in the lobby that read “Back in a few minutes.” Another customer was already waiting, an older man. We chatted and looked at the back of my camera to see the photo. “Yeah, I drove by that house too,” he said. “Some years, I notice the red and orange maples, but this year, it’s the yellow that’s fantastic. It’s been a golden fall.”