The Red Leaf Story
It’s time! It’s time I tell you the red leaf story. It is one of my very best stories.
I moved to China the fall after I graduated from college. I was there to study Mandarin, and to get to know college students at the university where I studied, and I was beyond excited for this exotic adventure. A few months in, as happens living overseas, the honeymoon phase began to wane. One rainy and blustery afternoon, I found myself under an umbrella talking with a new Chinese friend, stumbling my way through a painfully clumsy conversation not entirely in English nor in Mandarin. “This is awful,” I thought. “What am I doing here anyway?” I was frigid, drenched, and grumpy. I waited for a not-too-awkward exit and began making my way home. With each step, my spirit hung further in melancholy doubt.
Taking place sometime in November, I began looking up and around me. The path was overgrown on both sides by trees that made an archway down the road. “Hmmm, this is curious,” I thought. “I see brown leaves, yellow leaves, some twinges of orange, but no red leaves. Where are the red leaves?” (Sidenote—I grew up in Southern Texas, too far south to draw out the deep red colors of the regions further north. I had never known a red-leafed autumn. Why did this seem odd to me? I can’t say.) Following this reflection, a random but crystal-clear thought entered my mind, and it was precisely this— “If God loved me, He would give me a red leaf.” It was such an odd notion that it was quickly followed by self-criticism. “What? That’s a stupid idea. You shouldn’t need a leaf to prove that. How utterly ridiculous!” I dismissed it out of hand. Yet, on the rest of my walk, I kept my eyes peeled for a hidden gem, to no avail. I arrived back at my dorm and worked to put it out of my mind.
Days later, I met up with this same Chinese friend a second time. I’d like to report that I was cheery this time, but that wouldn’t be true. As our time came to a close, she remarked, “Oh, wait a minute, I have something for you!” She opened a book where she’d placed a piece of mail, unfolding something as she spoke. This letter arrived for me yesterday. You probably haven’t noticed, but we don’t have any red leaves in this city, any at all. But I come from the north, where we have a lot of red leaves. My friend sent me two of them because she knows I’ve been homesick. These come from a place in my hometown called the Red Leaf Forest that is famous for its gorgeous red leaves. When it arrived, I thought, “I’ll keep one of them, but I need to share the second one with my friend Tracie. She won’t find any at all here in this city.” She pulled it out of the envelope and held up a pristine, crisp, crimson maple leaf, with a smile. “Would you like to have it?”
I stood there in shock with my mouth open, which quickly gave way to tears. I reached out to hold it and I could tell my friend was confused. In broken Chinese and clumsy hand gestures, I tried to capture the story. I have no idea how it actually translated, but she could tell I was moved. Before the thought entered my head; before my foul-mood attempt to spend time with my friend that rainy day, the leaf was already in the mail. This delivery was so much more meaningful than if I had spied a red leaf on my walk home that day (which I would have easily dismissed as a coincidence.) But this, THIS story, I could not deny it. It was so deeply personal, so profoundly tailored to my innermost thoughts.
I didn’t know at the time, but exactly 10 years later, I would move to the city she spoke of, and visit the Red Leaf Forest in November for myself. The paths were, just as she said, completely blanketed with more bright red maple leaves than I could have imagined. There are many times since where I’ve longed for a sign of this sort, as many of us do, where nothing more than a dreary cold day seems to present itself. But this unmistakably stands out and beacons me to remember. You can call it a coincidence if you need to, but… actually, please don’t. You have to admit, THIS is a GOOD STORY.
