Fall-ing for Love

When I was eight, I was playing in the attic of our haunted farmhouse in rural Indiana. It was a blistering, summer morning, and I’d become bored with picking mulberries, sweeping the chicken coop, and pedaling our blue, hand-me-down bicycle in circles.

I chose to rummage in the attic where I didn’t escape the heat, but I had the prospect of finding treasures—Grandma’s tarnished tea service or an embarrassing school picture of my sister. On this particular day, I came upon a flimsy paper folded in thirds—a birth certificate for someone with the same first name as mine (same odd spelling), but a different last name. The mother listed was my mother, but the father was not. Even more strange, this Heide shared my birthday.

Wait a minute…

That’s how I found out that the dad I grew up with was not my biological father. The questions and possibilities of who, what, when, where and why were endless. It’s taken a lifetime of reaching out, researching, and visiting, but my biological father’s legacy to me has been a large and embracing family.

That summer of 1968 is a sharp memory albeit covered with years of dust. And now, the summer of 2023, too, is committed to memory. And what a summer it was—one of reunions with family— all three of them: my mother’s, my stepfather’s, and my father’s. I attended gatherings in refurbished barns nestled in corn fields. I overate at wholesome potluck dinners consisting of home-baked goods, cured meats, vegetables from backyard gardens, and berries foraged from the wild. I chatted with and hugged elders in their nineties and babies only a few weeks old. My summer was ripe with an abundance of maternity, fraternity, blood, lineage, kinship, and the occasional short-lived feud. I was gifted a cornucopia of reunions and bonds—reminders that I belong.

And now, Fall has descended like the feather comforter I’ve added to our bedding. I see and hear the Vs of geese honking goodbye. Chipmunks and squirrels stash their loot. Bears are fattening up before they bed down for the winter. Other than cutting spent, summer blooms, cleaning the abandoned bluebird houses, and dotting the house with pumpkins, I, too, am squirreling away that which will get me through what some promise to be a long winter. Fat with memories, I will rest, slumber, and dream cradled by generations of love.