Dead Leaves

     My mother was a teacher, a socialist, a feminist and very modern in her thinking.

     Yet even she still knew the stories about her great uncle – or was it great-great – who was an itinerant magician, traveling through Poland and performing little tricks for food.  His name was Avrum something or other but he had given himself the fancier stage name of Schmoolie the Conjurer and even had a sign printed saying so.

     Schmoolie the Conjurer visited Vilna only so often.  The people of Vilna were notoriously level-headed and there were other towns that seemed more willing to be duped and fooled.  But he was a traveling magician and Vilna had children that loved his wooden puppets and minor palming tricks.  What the adults thought of him is perhaps not worth mentioning here.

     On a cold autumn morning near the forest, Schmoolie set up his stage, nothing but a table with some props and that fancy sign with the scrollwork, and waited as the townsfolk gathered.  The kids were ready to be amused, the parents only there to make sure their children got back to their duties as quickly as possible.

     With great intensity, Schmoolie reached into his bag and pulled out a pile of dry, dead leaves.  Then with even greater drama, he went around and handed one leaf to each person there, man, woman, child.  He said nothing as he did this, thinking his mime was theatric.  Most everyone else took him to be an idiot because of it but the kids seemed amused and so they went along with the gag.

     Gesturing grandly, Schmoolie went through a series of motions with the leaf in his hand and impelled the others to copy him.  Flutter up, swoop down, hold against the cold sky, mutter and gesture to it like a bird, and then…place the leaf upon the top of your head.

     The children giggled, not so much at themselves but at the grown-ups who, tired and worn, were at least willing to do such silliness to hear their kids laugh. 

     But then…an amazing thing. 

     As the dead leaves lay there on the top of their heads – barely a whisper of weight – they felt the burdens of life lift and slip away.  In that moment – standing near the forest under the grey sky and wearing that dead leaf like a hat – there was no toil or turmoil or threat.  No war looming in the West and no coming dislocation.  No nightmare of stunning swiftness.  Only this moment and the acceptance in it of the joy of laughter and children smiling and the singular sound of life alive with life. 

     And then the sky darkened but they did not see it.

     Not then.