So The Garland Grows: leaves by mail

We received a shoebox full of fall leaves.

My sister-in-law and I have a thing about mailing gifts to each other, though she’s certainly done it more times than I have, kind soul.

The box was full of fruit leather and a few pumpkin spice oreos, even a fall candle. And an abundance of crunchy yellow, brown and orange foliage.

They came at just the right time, because even though it’s fall in Georgia, it’s a bit more fall-like in the cold of Indiana.

Eliot asks to go run in the fall-winter [leaves], even if it’s 75 degrees outside.

But to get a box full of autumn from 684 miles away? That’s a lot of seasonal magic.

So we gathered our blue string and Eliot piled his pens and markers and we made 2 leaf garlands.

And one hangs above the couch in the living room, the other over his bed.

“So fall can be in your room!” I said.

They are more than just crinkly, colored leaves.

They are an act of love, and a kind reminder that beauty can travel across state boundaries and from one mailbox to another.

My mom mailed a Missouri leaf to Eliot, too, and so the garland grows, and so fall asks us to cherish her beauty again and again.

Do you have an envelope handy and a tree nearby?

Go outside.

Hunt down a leaf, crinkled, golden, green, with veins of bursting color.

Send a letter, send a leaf, and cherish both seasons and relationships.

Especially when our season is hard, we must learn to cherish.

Send a leaf.

And fill your home with the quiet colors of autumn’s welcoming beauty, any way that you can.