Fall in full bloom. Illinois is a great state for fall. Georgia too, but Illinois is magnificent. Really I suppose each state has its particular wonders during each season, but I love this one in Illinois. We have a variety of trees here, and no shortage of windy days. As the colors change on the leaves it resembles a storm-tossed sea of flame. One that makes you dream of magical moments of childhood where you played “pretend” and came up with wondrous pirate adventures on playground equipment. When the woods around the corner that you had played tag in all summer suddenly took on legends about strange shapes and far-off voices that called from beyond the grave. Times when your friends would whisperingly describe outlandish dares to entice you into proving your courage by facing the nameless faceless unknown.

Or reminds you of moments later on, when you walked with that particular someone in the endless afternoon of your teen years, hoping against hope that you could steal a kiss from the lips of that someone, and that your life would suddenly make sense now that you had “that someone’s” hands or arms every night of the week. Or even still later, when you dared to reach under the clothes and explore the hidden areas that you dreamed were soft and warm and inviting. To investigate the twisting turning under the sheets things you saw in movies, perhaps first discovering the yearning searing passion of joining your body with someone else. Or maybe you sat among the falling leaves with a group of friends who you knew that no matter what would be there for you until the end of time. Maybe you sat and looked at each of them and wondered about the people that they would become and how those days of daring the nameless unknown together would affect you as adults.

Into your young adulthood when maybe you visited the place of someone you knew, now buried in the unyielding arms of the forgiving earth. When you looked around at the trees and saw for the first time that life is a circle of events, like the seasons. That time when you first realized your own mortality, that life is short and sometimes cruel. And like the trees in autumn, you shed some of the invincibility you had, the innocence you had when you dreamed of being pirates on flame tossed seas.

And while you muse on that particular thought, the leaves rustle past on their speedy to trip to leaf heaven, a voice calls out to you, young, strong, full of conviction, full of invincibility and still fresh from dreams of Pirate Flames. You wonder about the effect your own dreams have had on those of your offspring. Whether you have shaped them in to someone who is boldly going where no one has gone before. You wonder if the fruit of your days of passion under the trees will make his mark on the world. And wonder when they too will, like the trees, remember their days in the sun.