A little something I'm realizing about myself....

I'm sitting here typing with the most amazingly red maple outside the office window. When the sun shines just right on this tree it must be what it looks like to be within the core of a fire. For some reason I feel like eating the leaves. Maybe not eating as in swallowing, but chewing them up. Not sure why- they are just so vibrant and amazing my reaction is to want to chew them. I feel the same way when I see perfect baby cheeks. But I don't act on these impulses. At least not yet. But this weird desire to chew beautiful things isn't even what my insightful realization is all about. I've been aware of the chewing thing for years- at least since Eli plumped up after birth over 9 years ago and those cheeks tempted me so- what I have come to realize is that I have a real strong tendency to try to convince myself that things are not going to go well, so that I am delighted and surprised when they do. How does the tree figure into this? Well, now that it is once again the single most amazing shade of red, I have to admit that for atleast the last 5 years that we have lived here, with our office window looking out on this glorious tree, I have begun every fall repeating a little mantra to myself. Quietly. Kind of unaware that I'm doing it. But I say: "This fall is going to suck. The drought (or the cold, or the heat, or whatever I perceive that year's trouble to be) you know, the trees aren't going to turn as brightly. I mean look at the tree out back, the leaves are just going to go brown and drop, skipping the red. This fall is sure to suck." And I keep that tape looping in the back of my head. But then one day, sure enough, I'm sitting in the office and the sun breaks out from behind a cloud and I'm blinded. Every year. But I'm never convinced that it will happen again. So I stop by the window as often as I can during that one prime week in October, and I look out, and I am delighted and totally surprised. And really tempted to do a little chewing. I'm putting up a picture, but it really does NOT do the tree justice. It can't be captured.