I was resting on a park bench,
my cane laid beside me,
giving my weary bones a rest,
when a child came toward me
holding a beautifully colored leaf
she had found on the ground.
She held it out to me.
I looked at the leaf,
then into her eyes,
and suddenly became aware
of all the years
between us.
I had already traveled
so much of the road
she was only beginning.
And yet here we were,
an old woman,
a child,
and between us
a leaf.
Once it had been a bud,
then green,
opening beneath the sun.
Now autumn had colored it
and loosened its hold.
Soon it would return
to the earth beneath the tree,
becoming part
of what would grow
after it.
I looked again
at the child.
I had fewer years
ahead of me.
She had almost all of hers.
Yet my generation
was helping decide
the world
in which she would live in.
I thought of those
who came before me,
of the world
they had received
and the world
they had handed forward.
I am living
among their choices.
One day,
she will be living
among mine.
Perhaps age was never meant
to give us ownership
of the future.
Perhaps it was meant
to teach us
how to hand it forward.
The leaf rested
in my aging hand,
given to me
by a hand
still growing.
And for a moment,
the years between us
didn’t feel like distance.
They felt like a passage.
From one hand
to another.
From one generation
to the next.
I looked at the leaf
once more
and wondered —
What kind of ancestor
was before me?
And when it is my turn
to hand forward
what was placed
in my hands,
what kind of ancestor
will I become?
— a Torchbearer Wisdom by Corvalya