An October Afternoon in Finland

By Ana Santos Silva

After spending the previous morning picking colored berries from the bushes in the backyard and mowing the last summer grass, it was time to free the ground of the gold mantle of fallen leaves. It was an October afternoon and I was in Finland. The grass, which in certain spots of the garden mingled with patches of moss that had grown abundantly in the autumn rains, would not grow anymore due to the winder coldness setting in that would last until the next summer.

Finland mushrooms
Picture of Klaukkala, Finland, by Anu Kärkkäinen

Under some bushes, I noticed big and colorful mushrooms, like those I used to color white and red in comprehensive (US: elementary, Africa: primary) school. I watched berries rolling on the ground as my fan shaped broom raked the foliage; these berries appeared in the summer and now were falling from the bushes and trees with the fall wind. I watched them, feeling sad – I wish I could just pick and eat them all because I knew that when I went back to Portugal, there would be no more wild and pure berries in my life. And here they were forgotten, rolling on the ground … so precious. These ones were bitter, I was told because they did not get a chance to bask in the summer sun and that’s why the family had not harvested them. I continued watching them rolling.

finland-seasons
Picture of Klaukkala, Finland, by Anu Kärkkäinen

The smell of the Platanus leaves brought back memories of the beginning of autumn during my comprehensive school days when there were still four distinct seasons in Coimbra, and all the class went out to pick the most perfect and colorful leaf to paste it in our daily notebooks to start a new chapter. Far away, I got melancholic.

Suddenly on my face, I felt the first snowflakes of the year (and of my life!), small, frozen and ephemeral. I looked up into the sky and savored the moment. My friends later told me I looked focused – I was already writing this poem in my head.

Interrupted by a soft call, I went inside, left my working boots on the entrance as I had been taught to do and walked into the dining room of the typical Finnish house – large and amazingly comfortable, where some warm coffee with pullaa was waiting for me.

After the coffee break, I went back out to the backyard and picked up a small branch of golden leaves from the ground and pasted it in my notebook. Today, right now in front of me, I can still feel the smell of that afternoon as I open that page of my life.

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