It’s a beautiful fall morning, cool and sunny, filled with color—orange and red and burgundy leaves and blue, blue sky behind them. This glorious day feels intensely real. I know the larger world is out there, but it is not part of this beautiful here and now. I shall not deliberately call it to mind. I treasure this beauty, and I want to do it full justice, savor it as long as I can.

I am so very glad to live in a house with tall trees, to have lived long enough in this house that the yard is now mature, filled with plants that I love. I have always loved the look of the yards around old houses, the large shrubs and trees a bit overgrown, a bit neglected. Those yards were more interesting than manicured yards with trimmed hedges and sharply edged planting beds. Old yards invited exploration, hinted at places for good hide-outs. They spoke to my imagination in a way that manicured landscaping did not

I spent most of my childhood in a new house with just-planted trees and minimal planting around the house. The yard around the house was boring, but the site was not devoid of imaginative potential. Our lot was surrounded by a no-man’s land on the back and one side with wild oats, mullein, wild anise and other wonderful weeds. There was a ditch where I could make a playhouse, use the weeds for my play-food. And when I was on the top of the slide in our back yard, I could see old Valley Oak trees in the cemetery annex land on the other side of the railroad tracks behind our yard. I liked having those gnarly giants in the cemetery land where I could see them, but I never ventured into that untended acreage. That wild land hinted at danger, did not feel safe to explore, and I stayed close to my house and the houses of my friends, stayed where it felt safe.

My neighborhood offered plenty of places to play and explore, but where I really wanted to live was in an old neighborhood, in an old house. I dreamed of living in a big two-story house with a wide, deep porch like those along the streets near my school, leafy streets with tall sycamores growing in the planting strip between the sidewalk and curb. But I also liked the modest single-story wood houses in which my grandparents lived. Those old, worn houses felt comfortable, peaceful. I liked the quiet presence of my grandmothers, my Grandma Young working in her garden, my Grandma Willems rocking in her chair in the kitchen, crocheting and humming hymns. They were old-fashioned Grandmas who fed me when I was hungry but never tried to enter my child-world. They liked having me around them, I could tell, but they had their own lives, their own thoughts and concerns. They never tried to entertain me—I would have felt strange if they had. I liked being left alone, free to snoop and explore bedrooms, closets, nooks and crannies.

My grandmothers each had over thirty grandchildren, most of them living near-by. I am now much older than were in the years of my childhood, but my life has turned out much different than theirs. I have only two grandchildren, neither of whom have ever lived close by. But yet, now that I think of it, I do see and feel a deep likeness to them in their old age. Like them I live in a modest house with tall trees and other old people as neighbors. I also feel the settled peace I felt in them. I know my grandmothers did not always feel peaceful. I know they had worries and concerns. Yet underneath those worries was something solid. They were old, and they accepted that. They’d had their chance at life, and it was now time to let their children and grandchildren have their chance, build lives of their own. I doubt that either had any desire to be young again. Like them, my life’s major tasks are over. The final letting go of life is still ahead of me, but till then, at least for this moment, there is a deep measure of peace.

Loretta Willems, 10/15/2026