Finally Fall

It is fall. The skies are starting to fill with soft, cottony clouds and the leaves are beginning to turn. As I look around me, I remember something my mother taught me, years ago. While I was away at college, my mother would call me up from our home in Fullerton, California and ask me to look out my window. With a sigh and a backward glance at my stack of homework, I would obediently walk over to the window in my tiny dorm room on BYU's campus and look outside. "What color are the trees?" My mother would ask, expectantly. I would shrug noncommittally, as though she could see my shoulders hunch up and then down again, and say, "I dunno, Mom - kinda green?" and we would then talk about other items of interest until we said good-bye. This scene would repeat itself again the next week, and then the next, until one week in early October. She asked her usual question, "What color are the trees?" and I begrudgingly walked over to the window to find out. But this time, I was silent. Then a long breath escaped me as I sighed into the phone... "ohhhh, Mom!" The leaves had turned. They had changed, seemingly overnight into a glorious riot of color. Ambers, oranges, caramels and crimsons danced in the wind before my eyes. I stood quietly as I took it all in, from the tops of the Wasatch Mountains to the tree just outside my dorm window. "That," my mother stated, listening to my silence on the line, "is why I love Utah."

It is the first week in October in Utah, once again. The sky is overcast, but the leaves are beautiful. Earlier this year, I lost my mother to cancer. On April 30, 2011, she left us and my life will never be the same. But I will always have with me the things she taught me. She showed me how, despite my driven nature, to slow down and appreciate the gifts of nature God has given to us to beautify our lives. Autumn in Utah is one of those precious gifts. I doubt that I would have this appreciation had I not had the mother god gave me. Thank you, Mom - for this and for so much more. You opened my eyes to things I doubt I would ever have seen on my own.

As we all rush around checking off the boxes on our collective to-do lists, may we stop for a moment and take a look around. Breathe it all in. Count your blessings; even naming them one by one. We have all been given gifts in our lives. May we always know them, may we always be grateful for them, may we pass them on to the people we love.