Dear Oaklie

 

I wish the presidential campaign were over; the suspense is terrible. What if the wrong candidate is elected? Will we undergo a massive upheaval?

        But I trust the strength of our democratic institutions. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Constitutional Convention, the Constitution. The Bill of Rights. The traditions we’ve honored for two centuries. How can these just crumble? How could the whims of one man bring our nation crashing to the ground?

        Oh, how I wish it would rain. Just saw the saddest-looking oakleaf hydrangea. It was in my neighbor’s yard. The big, decorative leaves; they’ve hardly had a chance to change color. Now they’re folded and drooping. I enjoy October’s clear blue sky. I enjoy temperatures in the 70s. They make me doff my sweater. What is that Mother Goose rhyme about the sun beating down on a man walking down the road? Makes him remove one layer of clothing after another.

        I wish I were writing a novel. I’d write about a woman who loses her memory and sets out find it. It distresses her. Each day she remembers less and less. I’d give her a hydrangea name, Oaklie.

        One day – this happens while Oaklie is walking in her neighborhood – one by one her memories change color and tumble from the trees. That magnificently full maple tree in Smithtons’ yard, its color a deep dark red? It startles her, though it does the same thing every year. She asks the maple, Are you a particular kind of tree?