Many precious memory leaves dangle on the aging tree of my life, some of them are a vibrant mosaic of Autumn-hued leaves from my childhood. Amongst them are recollections of wearing a sassy red woolen beret while driving my turquoise Murray car over the brown leaf-covered lawn of our Pennsylvania farmhouse; crunching the yellow and rust-colored leaves beneath my feet as I walked to the end of the dusty country lane for the bright yellow school bus; the invigorating and crisp air, a welcomed reprieve from the long and sultry days and exhaustive dark nights of summertime without air conditioning; picking many dark blue Concord grapes from the arbor in back of the house, and stopping to eat one now and then; and my mom canning juice and making a clear purple jelly made from those grapes.

A real treat was choosing bright orange pumpkins, along with my cousins, Tommy and Teresa, from Grandpa Harrell's pumpkin patch; chilled apple cider; playing hide and seek amongst the lifeless golden brown corn stalks; dressing  up for Halloween in my black cat costume; an abundance of golden pears and crimson red apples rinsed in an ancient sink with icy cold water from a hand pump; the fragrance of spicy and sweet pumpkin and apple pies; my dad cutting  a ruby red apple in half and scraping, with a spoon, the sweet goodness for me  as I  sat in  his lap; ebony shelled black walnuts and fresh crunchy chestnuts from the trees near our dark red barn; a bowl of mixed nuts with  a nut cracker and picks for getting all the nut’s goodness out of the shell.

Memories include wearing deep jewel-colored cardigan sweaters; my mom peeling buckets of apples to make sweet, cinnamon-colored apple butter; on a crisp morning, precious warmth from the wood cooking stove in the kitchen; crystalline blue skies sporadically dotted with fluffy white clouds, and last  but not the  least, the feeling that coursed through me as I sat in the back seat of our big, maroon Hudson sedan, looking out at God’s awesome palette of colors as my dad drove us along the country drive to church on Sunday mornings that time of year.