The Maple That Let the Sky Through

The kitchen calendar has a heading that says Spring. Outside our door, the maple writes it differently: small red buds crowd the tips of twigs. I stand on the step and squint. Each bud is a bundle waiting to open. Then, day by day, green edges slip out, and tiny leaves unfold like hands. Through the branches I can still see the blue bowl of sky above our roof.

By summer, those small hands have grown broad. The leaves overlap, making a canopy, a leafy roof above the patch of grass. I bring my lunch beneath its shade and listen to a rustle overhead. The sky that filled the gaps in spring now peeks through little windows of green. When sunlight warms the doorstep like a stove, I carry my chair toward the trunk, where shadows gather around my feet.

In autumn, yellow spreads across that roof, with orange patches bright as slices of peach. A leaf lets go and spins past my knee. More follow, until the grass wears colors that used to hang above my lunch. Each falling leaf makes one more opening. I look up through the thinning canopy. The sky is coming back, I think, but what will shelter this familiar spot when every leafy hand has slipped away?

Winter leaves the maple's branches bare. Without its leafy roof, our spot looks strange. “Is our tree empty now?” I ask Mom. She bends a low twig gently toward me. Along its sides sit buds, shut tight, small packages that hold next spring's leaves. I remember red bundles from the first warm days. The tree has not forgotten how to grow. Above its resting branches, sky shines clear. I leave my chair beside the kitchen door and wait for green hands to open again.