Thursday in October

I’m afraid if I talk about this picture, I’ll ruin its perfection. So I’m going to talk to it instead. I took it on a Thursday in October.

To the Tree Outside My Window:

They say you should at least be aware if you view the world through rose-tinted glasses. And I am. I viewed my entire week through your rosy glow, and it made everything better.

Seriously, the glow. It pours into Jake’s bedroom window, and I want to swim in it. It pours into my window, right above the chest that holds my journals, spilling onto the corner of my bed, and I want to just lie down and bake in it until everything seems as rosy as the glow.

We used to have a tree in the back that blossomed gorgeous white petals in the spring. It made our yard look like a wedding every year, and then the petals fluttered like the fake ones that fluttered the day we were married. That tree died and had to be cut down. It broke my heart into a million pieces. Your fall color even makes up for that.

It makes up for the hours between 3 and 5 each day when I tend to lose heart for the day job – heart and creative energy and regular old energy and the passion to keep on working from home for a paycheck that barely gets me through to the next one. This week I worked those hours on the floor in front of the window that frames you, and the paycheck didn’t look so inadequate after all.

When Felicity and I were little, if we pumped our feet enough and got the swing high enough, we could see the red roof at Mrs. Williams’ house. We thought it was Neverland. Or Japan. The first day I pulled into our driveway in back of the house and saw that the leaves peeking over it were red (though the leaves out my window were still green), it felt exactly like seeing Neverland at Mrs. Williams’ house. Or Japan.

If you are Neverland, could you shake out some fairy dust that looks something like the winnings from a lottery ticket? Because we might have outgrown this house already and be planning a move someday in the future. But I would really like to keep this one forever as a museum to some of the happiest years of my life. And the rosiest.

Sincerely, Me.