A while back, as I drove home from a trip to Hackensack I
saw more and more trees, now looking like skeletal remains of themselves, after
shedding their summer foliage. Fall can be a nice time with its cooler
temperatures, fewer bugs and all the colors. But its like going to a good movie
you waited ages to see and knowing that with each frame the story is being revealed
to the point where soon there is no more to tell. You leave the theater happy
you were allowed to see and hear the film but sad it had to end. That’s what
autumn is-- the ending to another summer-- and yes there will be more, but not
for a while and sometimes it’s that “while,” we find so hard to take.
I received a phone call yesterday from a friend, who told me
that a mutual friend and neighbor, was going into Hospice care. I know none of
us can pick our time to leave and if that were true we simply won’t leave would
we? But notice the similarity between leaves and leave and in a twisted sort of
way I guess when my time comes, if it could be in the fall, I would think it a
most appropriate time to leave. The end of summer and the end of life, at least
for me, have something in common. I hear in the back of my mind right now, the
lyrics of Nat King Cole when he sang so beautiful-- and just for today, so very
fitting. “Those falling leaves drift by
the window. Those autumn leaves of red and gold. I see your lips, the summer
kisses. The sunburned hands I used to hold. Since you went away the days grow
long and soon I’ll hear old winters song.”
Okay, lets lighten it up. There were days when I welcomed
fall. The hunt was on for birds and deer. Fresh squash and kitchens sounding
off with the pinging of can lids, as the garden went from fresh to canned.
Football and kids back in school. You could see through the woods again at a
whole new world that you had walked by so many times that summer. The smell of
leaves burning in the driveway brought the neighbors out, as is if it was a
miniature homecoming event. But then inevitably the days grew shorter and
colder and the bird’s left and the animals hunkered down and it was strangely
quiet in our little corner of the world. So quiet you could almost hear the
snowflakes fall as they blanketed the earth in a covering cloak of white. All the
color seemed to go out of the land and suddenly it was just black and white,
dark cold. Even the lake was silenced under an icy canopy that enhanced the
biting cold ebbing ashore and eeking through our clothing, when the winds blew across
it.
I grew up in a house heated by wood. My father cut wood for
several months, after work each day and us boys helped. He said it warmed you
twice-- once when you cut and hauled it-- and once when you burned it. We had a
gravity fed furnace and whatever you burned you smelled. The smell of red oak
and birch still bring a sense of warming to me. There was much more family time
to be had back then as we were clustered together to stay out of the weather.
As siblings we played games and read books. Supper was much more leisurely then
summer time because you weren’t all rushing off to go some place. And at night
when you climbed those stairs, to that cold bedroom, to crawl under those thick
blankets and cuddle with your brothers for warmth--- Well I guess what I’m
trying to say is it gave you a whole new appreciation of family and
togetherness.
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