{"id":15341,"date":"2018-09-28T09:43:29","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T13:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=15341"},"modified":"2018-09-28T09:43:29","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T13:43:29","slug":"red-leaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/red-leaf\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Leaf"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 2018 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

By Morgan Callan Rogers<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Fic\"T<\/strong><\/span>he Halloween wind is bullying a fallen red leaf stuck in a crack between two rocks in a stone wall located across the street. So far, it refuses to be blown away, and I admire its tenacity.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m in the rocking chair in the kitchen with my daughter. \u201cDo you know that leaf has been there for a couple weeks?\u201d I call to her. She\u2019s making us supper. She\u2019s a good cook, except for her tendency to under-salt foods. She says too much of it isn\u2019t good for me or for her father. \u201cWe\u2019re ninety,\u201d I tell her. \u201cWhat the hell. Salt away.\u201d But she\u2019s always followed her own recipes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The oven bell dings. She turns it off and walks over to me. \u201cWhat leaf?\u201d she asks. My hand trembles as I point to where it flutters like a bright rebel flag. \u201cThere,\u201d I say. <\/span><\/p>\n

She squints. She\u2019s nearsighted, like her father. She studies it for a long time. Finally, she says, \u201cI don\u2019t want to bust your bubble, Ma, but that\u2019s a new surveyor\u2019s ribbon. Remember? Someone\u2019s going to build a house in Lovett\u2019s field, and they brought in the surveyors to mark the land.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d forgotten that. \u201cMaybe,\u201d I say, \u201cbut that\u2019s a leaf if I\u2019ve ever seen one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not, Ma. And it\u2019s pink, not red,\u201d she says in her soft, Oh-the-poor-dear voice.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, it\u2019s not,\u201d I spit back, equal parts embarrassed and disappointed that I\u2019ve been cheering on the fortitude of a plastic ribbon. Then I concede. \u201cYou sure?\u201d I ask.<\/span><\/p>\n

She hunkers down and takes my hand and rubs it for a minute because it\u2019s always cold, and then she does the other one. She tells me it\u2019s important to pay attention to both sides of your body. Sometimes we do a little stretching when she\u2019s here. I don\u2019t dare do it on my own because I\u2019m pretty sure something will snap. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want it to be a red leaf then it\u2019s a red leaf,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

She kisses my forehead and goes back to the oven. I\u2019ve been patronized and dismissed. Call me done. \u201cDon\u2019t forget to add some salt,\u201d I grumble at her. \u201cYou never add enough salt.\u201d I grab onto the handles of my walker, hoist myself out of the rocking chair and shuffle off to the living room with what\u2019s left of my dignity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every day, I\u2019m reminded of all the ways my parts are failing my body. If they aren\u2019t dried up, they\u2019re leaking. I depend on diapers. One of my teeth fell out during supper the other night. Only a podiatrist can control my unruly toenails. My skin is so thin I can see through to the thick river of blood trudging through my veins. I\u2019m not senile yet, but a little pinch of madness might break up the monotony.<\/span><\/p>\n

I reach the living room where my husband is sleeping in his lounger. He sleeps more and more. We\u2019ve angled his chair in front of the television set. He can\u2019t see his sports shows straight on because he has macular degeneration\u2014another sign that we\u2019ve outlived our bodies. Masculine degeneration. Feminine degeneration. I can\u2019t remember the last time either of us felt like fumbling through the mattress dance.<\/span><\/p>\n

My husband raised hell when he was younger. Not bad hell, like going out on me with another woman, but hell with his drinking buddies, his hunting buddies, or his buddies at the fraternal order of some animal or another. I had to call around to get him home for supper at least once a week. That part wasn\u2019t much fun, but most of it has been pretty good. I almost lost him last winter. We had a bet as to which of us would go first. Looked like I was going to win. Some ghastly infection found him, and we took him to the hospital, where he spiked a fever of 104 degrees. They told us to expect the worst. But he came back and here he sits.<\/span><\/p>\n

I fall back into my lounger just in time for our talk show. Everyone is cheering the host. They\u2019re all so damn perky. From the game shows in the morning to about four o\u2019clock in the afternoon, we get relief only when the shows break for ads selling pillows, mattresses, or discount sofas.<\/span><\/p>\n

M<\/span>y daughter comes in and tells me supper will be ready in about twenty minutes. She winks and says she\u2019s added more salt. It won\u2019t be enough for these shriveled taste buds, but I know she\u2019s trying. She\u2019s a good girl. <\/span><\/p>\n

She and her father used to lock horns over everything. After one nasty shouting match between them she asked me why, out of all the men I could have picked, I chose him. \u201cHe\u2019s a good man,\u201d I said, and he has been for the most part. I\u2019m glad he\u2019s asleep, in the chair. I can keep an eye on him here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last winter, outside our living room window, I spied a small oak branch that had detached itself from its mother tree and fell, where it nestled into the wide branch of a pine tree. I cheered for those branches to rock each other throughout the snow months. The oak branch finally slipped and fell in the spring, where it was carted away on yard waste day. Call me superstitious, but I think the resolve of those branches to stick together through the worst of it was part of the reason my husband made it back to me. Old age isn\u2019t pretty, I know, but it\u2019s something. <\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I was happy when I found what I thought was the red leaf. I\u2019ll have to keep looking now for something else tough enough to hold on despite the fact it\u2019s broken. I know it isn\u2019t an easy thing to do. <\/span><\/p>\n

Morgan Callan Rogers is the author of two novels, Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea<\/em> and Written on My Heart<\/em>. She lives in the West End of Portland.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 2018 | view this story as a .pdf By Morgan Callan Rogers The Halloween wind is bullying a fallen red leaf stuck in a crack between two rocks in a stone wall located across the street. So far, it refuses to be blown away, and I admire its tenacity. I\u2019m in the rocking chair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[229],"class_list":["post-15341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-october-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15345,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15341\/revisions\/15345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}