Half an Hour

This morning, I was half a block from my bus stop when the bus went whizzing merrily through the intersection.

I was not late. It was early.

With a few choice words on the probable ancestry of bus drivers who can't stick to the schedule, I struck out for the nearest coffeeshop to wait out the half hour until the next bus came along. On the way I passed beneath the overhanging branches a tree festooned with leaves faded to a glorious shade of chartreuse. The sidewalk beneath was carpeted in those leaves, rustling as I walked over them.

A breeze kicked up just then and knocked a bushel of them free from the branches. I stopped and stood there laughing like a crazy person while the leaves whirled around me. I wasn't slumped in a bus seat on my way to my rapidly-disappearing job. I wasn't trying to coax resume-worthy phrases out of my sleepy brain or calculating for the hundredth time just how long my severance package could be expected to support me.

No, I was standing on the sidewalk on a quiet street being pelted by windblown leaves on a crisp autumn morning when all the colors of the world were just beginning to turn winter-bright. Half an hour that normally belongs to my obligations suddenly belonged to me, the unexpected gift of an early bus.

The breeze died and the leaves settled around my feet and I continued on to the coffeeshop. When I asked for a jacket for my cup the guy behind the counter and I spent a minute laughing over all the funny things he'd had customers call those little rings of cardboard. My favorite was "mittens".

Then I sat and drank my coffee and read my book and watched the dry red and brown maple leaves skitter across the road outside. When the next bus came, I got on it and I went to work, where most of the cubicles are empty now and everything I do comes with a countdown clock attached.

But when I close my eyes, I can see brilliant green leaves swirling in the wind.