Si se puede

The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of goodbye,
the wind, travelling, waving them in its hands.
- Pablo Neruda

The first time I remember noticing the winds was just over 4 years ago.

We had moved to a new place after 5 and a half years in the apartment where we'd landed on arriving on the west coast. We were still renting, but we were in a house now. It was stone and funky; it had a fireplace, a big farm kitchen, a deck out back. We could almost afford it.

The winds whipped through our little hamlet like clockwork every afternoon. The old oak grazed a formidable arm across the front window and released its spiky little leaf boats.

“Winds of change!” I'd joke to my husband as I joyfully sold off junk we should have gotten rid of 5 and a half years earlier. “Winds of change!”

We switched our voter registration to our new address and settled in.

Despite the winds, change didn't come. At least not the change we expected, not the kind we'd hoped for.

In that house, during all of the 6 months we lived there, before our landlord decided to reclaim it, all our plants died mysterious deaths and the studio in the back – my would-be writer's haven – remained packed with our landlord's stuff. It was also the place were I'd conceive our son.

That was three houses ago now, the “old, old, old house,” my son will tell you, from when he was just in mama's belly.

The winds have returned, I notice. And it's that time of year again.

The tree in my front yard these days is a sycamore that every day pummels the lawn with buckets of leaves like so many parachutes. Isaac pounces, and they reply with that satisfying crunch from under his sandals - finally out of place now in the full-swing of fall.

“Winds of change,” I caught myself whispering the other day.

Maybe it's that little boy, but I'm a sucker for hope. This year.