Dead Leaves in my Backyard

trivial thoughts on a quarantine chore

With a straw-broom in my hand, I stare at my backyard.

Dying leaves lazily lie over the concrete patch surrounded by grass preening under the morning sun. Sparrows greet the gentle sporadic breeze with an enthusiasm alien to me. On mornings as beautiful as this, I would’ve preferred the company of a warm mug of coffee to savor a paperback — cleaning the backyard would never have made it to the list of chores I’d get done without complaints.

Yet here I am, looking at dead leaves I’ve let settle in my backyard for longer than is deemed healthy. With a sweeping motion that came to impulsively — believe me, I lack the charm of wielding a broom — I begin directing the leaves with the plan to pile them under the mango tree still in its youthful vigor, and then transfer the collection into the trash cart to be dumped later — a flawless plan, or so I thought.

During the course of my sweeping, the crunch of dry leaves, broomsticks rubbing against concrete, a rhythmic nostalgia reminds me of the time when I had, on insistence, piously watered the trees to nourish these very leaves. The image of watching them wither had never, for once, flashed across my eyes oblivious to the tolls of time.

We all have, some time or the other, watered plants of our choice without sparing a thought to their death — from high-school flings with a certain someone to all those scents that still flutter around our memories like yellow butterflies; from college romances to those flowers that lost their smell as they wither in wasted vases. In that space in time the whole act is but that of nourishment, hope pours out of the watering cans, and images confined to our imaginations fuel our future.

A different dawn caresses us out of the bed. Time in units of days and years has elapsed since we last bothered to check in on the plants, and only dead leaves like souvenirs of past wait in the backyard to be swept away. I had been putting it off, the cleaning, because certain parts of me still clung to memories that once gently cooed me to a sleep of peace.

Today, during the course of my sweeping, the pale shades of every leaf my eyes made out from others were reminiscent of vibrant hues my days were once painted with. With a sigh, I kept pushing them in a determined direction - it was about time.

On organizing a neat pile of past once precious, under the mango tree still young and ambitious, I was about to conclude my job done. But Providence made me gaze over my shoulders — with the gentle breeze so welcomed by the sparrows, fresh leaves descended from their pedestals of present, to embrace the grass. The leaves would soon fill the backyard again. This way, I’ll never get the backyard spotlessly clean until the seasons would have some mercy.

Dumping the pile in the trash cart, I push it away from my backyard, humming the thought of returning tomorrow, to collect some more dead leaves and clear space for even more.

And when I thought my job for the day was done, my eyes fell on the water can, waiting to be put to some use.

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