A New Fall

By: Joao Mendes Dos Reis

When my plane landed, I took some five minutes to make sense of things. Alone.

Edmonton. First time in Canada. “Taxi!” I found myself screaming at the airport’s entrance. An old woman comes to help me, and even though I may try to hide it, when she asks my name, we both can’t deny my Brazilian heritage.

“Nice meeting you! I’m João. I’ve just fallen here. Can you take me to the taxi, please?” I plead.

“Okay,” she answers simply, a single word as a raindrop falling from the sky. “Why are you here?” she asks.

“I came to study. Concordia. It begins this fall term.”

“Great! Neither am I.” She said and nodded.

“I’m sorry?”

“I wasn’t born here in Alberta either.”

A couple hours in the airport was all it took me to see plenty of people from different countries, plus some Canadians here and there.

“Yes, you’ll find plenty of people from different countries, plus some Canadians here and there.” She said, as though she had read my mind, as if the words had fallen from my lips. “I come from India. But I have been living here for the past million years! You scared of anything?”

“I am excited to see the snow for the first time, and I am afraid it might burn me.”

“Don’t worry about winter. Worry about fall first.”

“But when the fall comes, will the leaves fall from the trees? The leaves in Brazil don’t really fall, I think. The whole year seems to be summer in the tropics.” I ask her, with some fresh and naive astonishment in my voice.

“In Canada, the wind blows the trees, and the wind blows the hearts of people. The summer only ends when the branches of trees decide to let their leaves go, because they had a change of heart. You see, some leaves and flowers are already spread on the floor. So the trees are already changing their attitude towards life.”

“I see. My memories of my homeland are spread in the back of my head– and I move on, leaving behind what I had before I came here.” Am I changing my attitude towards life?

“Flying to a distant ground responds to the needs of adventures. So the leaves must fly and fall. Although the leaves are leaving, they aren’t abandoning the trees,” she says, words as raindrops.

I take a moment to be in silence, thinking to myself: do leaves forget what tree they fell from? Maybe. There are several tall trees around. My tree is called Brazil. Her tree is called India. There are several polyglot trees around— this ground is called Canada. I guess leaves mingle anyways, and leaves mingling might be distressing, but the ground they touch belongs to all of them. I hope the trees and the land are kind. Leaves are so afraid of falling, but flying responds to the needs of life. I am glad I met this woman here.

“Let the fall begin,” she says.

She helps me get inside a taxi. I thank her. We wave goodbye.