A post in which I sympathize with a tree because I, too, like to be naked.

There's this one tree in the park that always changes colour in August, ages before we're ready to even think about the end of summer. 

It has always made me a little mad, to be honest - stop rushing into the sadness! I would think. The long bare winter will come soon enough; let's enjoy summer and fall a little longer, a little slower. Keep those beautiful leaves another month or two.

We're only midway through September and she's already half naked. But somehow instead of making me sad, it struck me that she was enjoying this.

You know that feeling you get when you're out at some glorious event, wearing your beautiful clothes? And it's wonderful and you're enjoying yourself so much, but also at the back of your mind is the knowledge that soon you will experience the delight of kicking off your pretty (but too squeezy) shoes. You will take off that dream of a dress and draw a breath of relief.

And it struck me that this tree might love losing her leaves in exactly the same way. 

Maybe she is stripping down and shaking free and kicking away her uncomfortable shoes in a glad little dance of bliss. Maybe she's glad to shake out those leaves like I pull out hairpins and let down my hair. 

Maybe she isn't sad that winter is coming - maybe she's looking forward to the brisk wind against bare branches, with nothing at all between her and the wide blue sky.  

And by this time of course I know I'm not thinking about leaves or a tree but myself, and maybe this is what I love about getting older, why I was so happy to hit 40 last fall --

Maybe as I'm older I'm glad to be a little more myself every year, to be a little less who I think other people expect me to be and a little more true to who I am. Maybe I'm kicking off the weight of expectations gladly, and maybe I, too, want to hold up my own undecorated branches just as they are in the light of the wide blue forever. 

Maybe stripping off the colours isn't sad at all. Maybe it's bliss. Maybe it's freedom.