In which The Gay Recluse remembers the fall.

This weekend we visited family and spent time remembering what a weirdly obsessive kid we were in many ways, some of which involved books about birds and spiders, others of which involved stuffed animals, and still others of which involved a crippling fear of birthday parties. Perhaps this wasn’t so weird after all!

We were also obsessed with leaves, and each fall we used to like to make an enormous pile of them over a series of carefully disguised cardboard boxes at the base of the maple tree in our front yard.

Then we would quietly sit in the dark, earthy air, peeking through the slots and listening to the men as they walked home from work, hoping that we would learn some secret about the strange world they inhabited.