Autumn Leaves
So, Sarah at Sarah and the Goon Squad got me thinking about leaves…
And then…
My neighbor shocked me…
I took the Nugget outside to play. She has one of those Little Tykes cars with the yellow roof and orange body, and she’s nuts about it. First, I pushed her all around and then SHE wanted to push it all around. It has a busted left front tire, becauase we got it used, so it sticks sometimes and then I feel a little bad.
My neighbor waved to Nugget and then we said hello to each other. I overheard him ask one of our city employees if today was leaf day.
Of course, it was.
Had we raked any leaves up? No.
I raked as fast as I could while keeping one eye on the roving toddler. At one point, I turned my back for one very small second and found her climbing the cement stairs. And then I was surprised to see how good she was at getting up them without knocking herself in the head or otherwise damaging herself or letting out howls of outrage.
The leaf machine truck entered the street, and I still had half the yard to do. At the same time, Nugget decided that the truck was loud and scary and she had to hug my legs. I picked her up and kept raking with one arm, which is NOT easy to do.
As an experiment to see if I could stop holding her and get the raking done faster, I put her down and told her all about the truck in a happy voice.
Behind me, a voice asked, “Do you want some help?”
My neighbor had walked over with his rake, and he started raking my leaves with me.
I was stunned at the kindness. Maybe I’m a cynnical city girl, but I’ve never lived in a neighborhood (since I was little) where the people were this nice.
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