I was a prairie schoolmarm, teaching a few miles from where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived. I would have looked familiar to Wilder, as I wore practical, sturdy, blue jean jumpers with cargo pockets, cotton tights, and brown, hook-and-eye boots. To encourage a former student to apply to Harvard, I applied as a ploy, was shockingly accepted, and went from playing tag with second graders to crossing the Charles to reach my new school.
I took an infamous class at the Kennedy School of Government, commonly known as Leadership, which gathered Big-A types: former mayors and presidents, diplomats, an aircraft carrier captain, and captains of industry. It was a melee as the teaching staff didn’t fill the hours and the whiteboard with words. They sat back, spoke rarely and cryptically, and let us attempt to exercise leadership, i.e. try to helm the class and take it in whatever direction we wanted. With so many accustomed to power and podiums, it devolved on the first day into a scrum and stayed that way for weeks.
One day, while walking the four miles to school, for a prairie schoolmarm can’t afford Cambridge rent, I saw a superb sugar maple leaf on the sidewalk. Now, you must understand something about a New England fall. I was born on the West Coast and have lived in the Midwest, upper Great Lakes region, and the South, as well as Massachusetts and Maine, so trust me when I say that a New England fall isn’t oversold. It delivers and it’s not just the sugar maples. The North Atlantic has been sponging heat all summer, so all fall, it’s leaking heat, moderating day after day. Plus, the humidity is low, so the air has a clarity that would make a diamond grader grin.
The sugar maples were shedding their gold that day, so I stuck that leaf into my top knot. After a block or two, I saw an even brighter one, which also went up top. Block by block and mile after mile, I added to my hoard, like a beachcomber dropping shells into their t-shirt. The beachcomber reaches a realization when the shells have stretched their t-shirt so far that it’s banging into their thighs. Only then do they wonder where all those shells will go. I also had a realization when I reached the Kennedy School and saw my reflection in the glass.
I had a crown. It was glorious, the best leaves of the best fall day of the best fall region. Queen Elizabeth’s crown, the State Diadem, would pale beside my fluttering flame. I considered yanking and scattering the leaves, for I was about to enter Thunderdome, an MMA cage, the Coliseum, but shucking such beauty would be a secular sin. So, I stepped into the pit having the best hair day of my life.
We warred that day like any other day, each trying to wrest the reins, and then broke into small groups, where the discussion in all the small groups save mine was…me. All had misassumed that I turned my head into a sugar maple crown with leadership intent.
What did I mean by it?
Was it a metaphor?
A provocation?
Had the unending conflict in the class broken me?
I was oblivious to all the wondering.
Two days later, the large group met again and I made some comments that turned heads, not because I was fall-adorned again, but because the consensus was that I was a leaf-wearing flake and my observations with incongruent with that perspective. The next week, at the end of class, a group of classmates herded me to an apartment.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” they said.
“Why are we going?” I also asked.
“You’ll see,” they said.
At the apartment, more classmates awaited. Turkish sausages were sizzling in the kitchen. Sliced baguettes awaited them. Untouched Belgian chocolates were arrayed on a coffee table. They motioned for me to eat. I did. Then, without any preamble, each shared how they’d misjudged me because of the leaves, how they’d spent one small session dismissing me because of my crown and the next small session reflecting on the poignancy of my observations in the next class.
At the end of the apologies, one of them asked, “If you don’t mind, we’d love to hear what the leaves meant.”
I could have honestly said, “I’m a big kid. I love color. I put one in my topknot and then another and another and another. It was a long walk and I saw a lot of lovely leaves. I kept adding until I’d gathered more than I could realize, as I couldn’t see my head and leaves are light. Then, when I finally saw my reflection, I shrugged and went to class.”
Instead, I honestly said, “It was a case of carpe folia. We only get to circle the Sun so many times. Then we’re worms’ meat. The falling leaves remind me of that, how fleeting the beauty is. We must embrace it. You know, ‘Seize the leaf.’”
I had read the room. Their satisfaction was clear in their shining eyes However, I still wished I had shared the fuller truth, that I’m also, simply a kid, but I was content too, with Turkish sausage and Belgian chocolates in my belly.
Carpe cibus.
Seize the sausage.
The chocolates.
The apologies.
The leaves.
The day.
