As she wandered down the path, Ginger saw a yellow leaf lying in the dirt. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. Only a few days before, she was certain all the leaves on that tree had been green. Ginger looked up. There were yellow leaves everywhere. Some were pale as butter. Others were bright lemon yellow, and high in the branches were leaves that had turned the deep, glowing gold of afternoon sunlight. “When did you do that?” she asked. The tree, of course, didn't answer.

Ginger decided she must have missed something important. Perhaps leaves changed at night while everyone was asleep. She imagined them whispering to one another in the darkness. Are you ready? I think so. Then tonight we turn gold. The idea made Ginger smile.

She continued walking, looking more carefully now. One tree was still almost completely green. Another had changed only at the very top. Farther down the path, a whole row of trees seemed to have turned golden at once. Ginger wondered why they didn't all change on the same day. She found a place beneath one of the trees and sat down. Above her, the leaves trembled whenever the breeze passed through them, and every now and then, one let go. Ginger watched a leaf tumble slowly through the air, turning one way and then another, floating so gently that it seemed in no hurry to reach the ground. She caught it before it landed.

For a while, Ginger collected leaves. She found a tiny yellow one shaped almost like a heart, a large gold one with brown freckles, and another that was still green in the middle but yellow around the edges. None of them were exactly alike. Then the wind grew stronger, and leaves began sailing through the air all around her. Ginger stood and stretched out her arms. One landed in her hair. Another brushed her cheek. She spun beneath the tree while golden leaves fluttered around her like hundreds of little butterflies.

Ginger laughed until she became dizzy and dropped into the grass. For a moment she simply lay there, looking up through the branches. There were spaces between the leaves now, and that made Ginger a little sad. She liked the trees full and green. She liked the shade they made in summer and the sound they made when the wind moved through them. Soon the branches would be bare. “Why do you have to lose them?” she whispered.

A leaf loosened above her and drifted down beside her hand. Ginger picked it up. Maybe the tree wasn't losing its leaves because something had gone wrong. Maybe letting go was simply what trees did when one season ended and another was coming. The tree would stand through winter with empty branches, and someday, when the days grew warmer, tiny green leaves would appear again. Ginger was beginning to understand that changing didn't always mean losing something forever. Sometimes it meant making room for what came next.

When Ginger finally started home, she carried only one leaf with her—the brightest golden one she could find. The others she left where they had fallen. She tucked her leaf carefully inside a book when she got home. She wanted to remember the morning when she had gone outside expecting the world to look just as it had the day before and discovered that it had quietly changed.

The next morning, there were even more golden leaves. This time Ginger wasn't surprised. She stood beneath the tree and watched them fall. “It's all right,” she whispered. Then she held out her hands and waited for one to find her.