Behind the Puddle

I don’t remember the trees looking quite like this a few days ago. Of course, I didn’t exactly wake up this morning to discover their remarkable colors. I happened to see morning arrive from the other side of the clock, as sometimes happens when sleep and I aren’t particularly cooperative. But somewhere between yesterday evening and this morning, autumn seemed to have made considerable progress without my noticing.

The maple tree beside our yard is showing off shades of red, orange, and gold that seem much more vibrant than they were last night. Across the puddle, the mulberry tree, the one we’ve come to know as the V-tree or female tree, has lost nearly all its leaves. This is the same tree where our goose families have gathered, where Shelly the turtle has spent time, and where Stella and Stanley have perched throughout the summer. Its branches, once surrounded by greenery, are now exposed against the trees behind it.

The maple across the empty lot has found its autumn beauty as well, while some of the smaller trees and bushes along the opposite shoreline are nearly bare. A few yellow leaves remain, along with an occasional red one that makes me wonder when the others came and went. I don’t particularly remember one of those trees turning red this season, but the evidence suggests that it did. Apparently, an entire little chapter of autumn unfolded without my paying much attention.

Even the vegetation within the puddle has changed. The tall yellowing plants that filled portions of the shallow water earlier this season have died back, leaving a very different view of the shoreline. Perhaps the rising water contributed to their disappearance, or perhaps their growing season had simply reached its natural conclusion. Either way, what once seemed to occupy so much of the puddle is becoming part of its seasonal history.

And yet, some familiar things continue much as they have. The bush near the water’s edge still offers the sparrows a place to hide, gather, and occasionally argue about whatever sparrows find worth arguing over. We still see them visiting the pile near the fountain, moving between their familiar places as though nothing particularly remarkable has happened. Their surroundings are changing, but the ordinary business of being a sparrow continues.

I find myself wondering how many of these changes happened while I was sitting right here, looking at the same landscape. How many leaves changed color while I was watching the birds? How many fell while I was inside making dinner, working on something, or simply occupied with the ordinary responsibilities of another day? There wasn’t a particular moment when the mulberry announced it was finished with its leaves, or when the maple decided it was time to become brilliant red.

We tend to measure change by the moments we recognize it. We remember the day something began, the last time we saw something familiar, or the morning we realized things were no longer quite the same. But so much of life happens between those moments, in the hours and days when nothing appears particularly different. The changes are taking place whether we recognize them or not.

I think about how often this happens beyond the puddle. Children grow a little taller between visits, familiar routines quietly become memories, and places we have known for years begin to look different without our realizing when the changes started. Sometimes we can identify the exact moment something changed, but more often we simply look around one day and recognize that it already has.

There is something both beautiful and a little unsettling about that. We cannot possibly notice every small change taking place around us, no matter how carefully we try to pay attention. And perhaps we aren’t meant to. Living requires us to participate in the moments before us, even while other moments are quietly becoming part of the past.

Today, the maple is beautiful in a way it wasn’t a week ago, the mulberry has entered another part of its seasonal life, and the sparrows are still finding comfort among the branches along the shoreline. In another week, this view may look entirely different again. There is no reason to believe autumn will wait for me to finish appreciating what is here today before moving along.

Perhaps that is what I appreciate most about noticing these changes this morning. Not that I managed to catch autumn in the act, because clearly I missed quite a bit of it. But that I happened to look up in time to appreciate what was here now, without needing to account for every moment that brought it to this point.

So much of life changes while we aren’t measuring. That doesn’t mean we weren’t there for it. Sometimes we were simply busy living while it happened.

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