Even a baby boomer can still learn!

Some might say, baby boomers are getting so old, we don’t have much left to learn. Well, Erin O’Brien of Warwick, Rhode Island, proves that wrong. Moving only earlier this year from her lifelong home in Southern California to her husband’s native territory in New England, Erin learned about a whole new part of the country … and a whole new set of beauties in her life. This is short, but a poetic picture of Erin’s new life.

Down they drift one by one like snowflakes. From a distance it’s like peering into one of Monet’s watercolors. Up close it’s like looking inside a box of crayons. 

As a first grader in California, my little scissors and I made fall leaves of red, orange, and yellow construction paper. But during my first autumn in New England, I’ve discovered the reds are really carmine and crimson, the oranges like rusty nails, and the yellows like honey or amber.

A neighbor smiled to see me collecting pocketfuls of leaves as he drove by. The recent storm was a lesson in my first lengthy power outage, and I watched in dismay as the brilliant but fragile leaves of the day before were mercilessly rent from their branches. After the high winds I crunched through the drifts of brown leaves, searching for ones with still a tiny bit of green at the tip but fading to brighter hues.

A little bit of New England is on its way to California. This morning I mailed a small stack of envelopes, filled with autumn leaves.