Oak leaves are, depending on your view, the first or last to fall. Tonight they played the raspy background music to my eleven p.m. walk. Powder soft snow greeted me, the absence of traffic, the muffling of the city noises, no one about. I admit it, I kicked my way through the glittery fluff like a school girl.

It is easier to be innocent at night. Innocent in the snow. There is nothing to know at night. There is nothing to know in the snow. And, nothing destroys innocence like knowing. I know what I've done. I know what has been done to me. I know what many people have done or have had done to them because of the sacred confessional booth called the therapist's office. Sometimes my mind staggers at the realization of the thousands of hours of distress my ears hear and my heart processes. (And I do, literally mean thousands.)

Sometimes I notice my mother watching. She has mentioned that in her medical career she has noticed those who work with the mental patients start to become a little kooky themselves. Ah, what I wouldn't give for the freedom of a little temper tantrum. But no, I am simply the helper, and I help by knowing much more that I was designed to know.

So, I walk, and mile after mile I shake off the knowledge, peel off the sorrow and grind the corruption into the dust under my shoes. The way out is cleansing. The same road home is so full of possibility and life that I feel as if I have shed my skin, molted the itchy feathers, washed off the tears.

The trees see me passing below, before and after. They remind me that they too cry out. Creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. So I'll pretend that the oak leaves are waiting on me. They hang on through wind and rain and storm and snow. They hang on through dead of winter and fall off quickly in the spring as the new leaf buds push them to the ground. Those oak leaves don't want to miss a moment. It just may be the moment that I am fully and finally at last innocent and alive. Oak leaves have faith. I left my snow boots by the door, ready for tomorrow's chance at metamorphosis.