I was looking at the work of an orb-weaver that had crafted a web across a good portion of my kitchen window. I idly noted a curled and yellowed leaf caught in the web. Later that day, I saw the spider. It clung to the threads at the middle of the web, and by the end of the day, it had also bundled up a snack. The snack was in the shape of a stinkbug, and I thought, “Circle of life, man: circle of life.” The next day, both the spider and its snack were gone. From my chair in the living room, I looked out at the tree-limbs, its leaves bright with sun. I smiled at the passage of leaves across the window, and started softly singing “Autumn Leaves.” Then I thought, “Wait: what? Fall? Noooo!”
I had failed to notice that the year had blasted straight through summer and skidded into fall, which means that “The Old Man” — winter — is coming. So now, on my morning walks to the store, I see those yellowed leaves gathered at the edge of the grasses. In the spring, white fluff from some tree had clustered there like dust in the corners of my apartment. Now that the advent of fall has been foreshadowed by the drifting leaves (hang on, leaves! Resistance is not futile!) I am no longer melting in the blazing heat of summer. I am sweating in terror at the thought that temperatures could take an 80 degree plummet, from 90 to 10. I am a proponent of the cycle of “spring, summer, repeat.” Winter follows fall, so I want to eliminate the precursor to the cold, wet, un-wonderland.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: I hate winter. I do not like cold and I don’t like ice; slush gets old and (sorry Seuss) I fell down twice, last year. Or winter. Anyway, snow, ice and cold, while necessary for the balance of Earth’s environments, are not my friends.
I moved from Madera, California (average temperature, warm and cozy) to Clarksville, Indiana (average temperature, not hot) in June of 1978. My bride and I agreed that our daughter needed to be closer to our families, both of which were in Pittsburgh. We did not move east to get closer to nasty weather, so I was surprised when my bride suggested that we go to the recently opened Paoli Peaks ski resort. She thought that we would enjoy skiing. “Wait: skiing. Does that not involve snow, ice and cold? Why would I do that on purpose?”
When I lived in St. Louis, I would take my two young children to Forest Park in the winter. I had been told that they would enjoy sledding down Art Hill, a slope in front of the St. Louis Art Museum. I remember watching as Lauryn walked gingerly down the slope, and seeing her fly into the air when a sledder clipped her heels. And what great joy it was to watch my son on a plastic disc, in uncontrolled flight down that same hill and — Oh! Sweet winter — plow through the hay bales used to contain sledders and into and across the street below, coming to a stop just before he plunged into the frozen pond that had been a serene and scenic summer delight. Bad things happen in winter.
Johnny Mercer’s English translation of a French song became the “Autumn Leaves” we know. When I hear the line, “… but I miss you most of all … when autumn leaves start to fall,” the “you” I miss is summer.