I waited weeks for the leaves to change, and now they seem to have done it overnight. I drive home from Metro through tunnels of green and gold and that familiar acrid scent. Back home, I rush out with my camera to photograph the most beautiful trees in our neighborhood. The shimmering maples, the burning bush, and behind it all a wash of brilliant yellow from the turning oaks. We’re expecting wind and rain later this week and the leaves that are now on the trees will soon be on the ground. It is good to acknowledge the fleeting nature of beauty — and of cameras.
It’s the time of year when scarecrows lean on lampposts, monster spiders scuttle along rooftops and corn stalks cluster near hay bales. Halloween decorations have always seemed a little redundant in our house, though. Without even trying we have cobwebs in the corners, a squeak in the stairs and a haunted lamp in the living room. We usually put up other decorations too, witches, ghosts, even some fake cobwebs a few years ago. But those seemed rather silly. This year we may go “au natural.” We’ll let our house speak for us.
The woods are balding and purpled. Trees are thinning. I can see farther now into the thickets, which are no longer as thick. I bounce on the trampoline (Bouncer in the Suburbs? nah!), and when I’m tired I lie down on it and watch the leaves fall. So slowly, spiraling down, taking their time, an eternity of empty air beneath them. They fall singly or in pairs. Sometimes they are caught on an updraft, and then they soar. At this point, a falling leaf is still a novelty. I can observe it and think poetic thoughts about it. Soon leaves will fall so fast and in such number that I won’t have that luxury. I will be too busy to notice their progress through the sky. I will be raking.
We have no vivid reds and oranges here yet (maybe we won’t at all). What we do have is an autumn glow, a gradual shading of our leaves from green to lighter green to burnished copper. The trees are tired and thirsty. It’s been a rough summer for them; maybe they don’t have the energy for a full display.
We still have time for a fall worthy of New England. That’s what I always hope for. But if this is all we get, this polite curtsy of an autumn, this thinning and deepening of color, that will be fine, too.
Today, summer turns to fall. Today, we are poised between two seasons. While there is nothing extraordinary about this in terms of climate or meteorology — it happens twice a year — equilibrium is certainly rare in terms of human conduct. How often do you meet a perfectly balanced person, one who is neither too strong nor too weak, too bright nor too dim; who is enough of this world to make a life in it but not so much as to lose all common sense or perspective.
Such a person sounds too good to be true, too wise to be real. I suppose to be human means to be swept up from time to time in passion or folly, to vibrate between the poles rather than steadily plot a center course. The way of balance and equipoise may be what we strive for (at least some of us) but it is seldom what we achieve. And maybe that’s a good thing. Was it Mark Twain or Petronius who said, “Moderation in all things, including moderation.”
It became a habit this summer, a welcome one. I’d leave home a little after 8, do some laps or aqua jog in the deep end if no one was diving. At 8:45 the guard blows the whistle; the last 15 minutes are adult swim. I sidestroke in the gloaming. While treading water, I look at the Franklin Farm windmill. I listen to the conversations around me, the mothers with babies on their hips, the fathers bonding, tossing balls with their kids. One guy with a bald spot on the back of his head does what seem like labored laps while his kid sprays him with a soaker gun every time he reaches one side or the other. I think the guy is slow, but when we swim next to each other I notice he’s just as fast as me — in other words, I’m just as slow as he.
Last night I went for what I thought might be the last swim of the season. Turns out the pool will be open the next two weekends, but I doubt I’ll make it. It will be a cooler, and one of the best parts about swimming this summer — the reason I’ve done so much of it, I think — is how hot it’s been. I don’t mind bathtub-warm water.
For these reasons and more, last night’s dip felt like a valedictory. It was much earlier in the evening, of course, since it’s dark by 8, and I left quickly so I could drive kids to the first high school football game of fall. The pool was almost empty at the end — except for a surprise birthday party about to happen. As I was pulling out of the parking lot in the twilight I heard behind me a burst of sound. “Surprise!” and then a bunch of whooping and clapping. It was for the birthday girl, I know, but I couldn’t help but think it was a round of applause for summer itself.
Yesterday after a swim I looked at the sky, bright blue with dark clouds hovering, and I realized: Summer is half over. This is not a happy thought. So I pondered midpoints, the balance inherent in them, the way they help us see forward and back.
Because we vacationed in May this year, the summer seems lusciously long and uninterrupted. Seems precious, too. Use it all, I tell myself. From beginning to end. From early each morning till late each night.
Of course there are cicadas — we call them summer bugs — whose steadily rising chorus means that summer has truly arrived. And there are crickets, the warm nights full of their singing. But on sultry mornings or evenings, nothing says summer like the sound of a pulsating sprinkler. Tick, tick, tick, tick, spraaaay. Tick, tick, tick, tick, spraaaay. Listen to it long enough and it begins to sound like another insect. It is the mechanical side of summer, proof that we are parched, in need of moisture, that we can, in some limited way, make our own rain.
It’s how we’ve welcomed summer for at least a decade: Every year on the last day of school we make fudge and watch “The Music Man.” We started the tradition when the girls were in elementary school and there were shaving cream fights at the bus stop. We’ve toned down the clamor some, but “The Music Man” remains.
It’s a perfect summer film: 4th of July pageants, picnics in the park, barbershop quartets, one of my favorite movie lines: “I always think there’s a band, kid.” And of course, there’s the music.
It’s chilly outside this morning, but one thing about the day makes me think about the sticky summer weather to come. It is shade, the deep green depths of it, the way it cools and soothes. I grew up in a shadeless subdivision, playing in meadows and along creek banks for hours each day under a full and merciless sun. The two trees in our front yard were saplings I was dying to climb. By the time they were large enough, we’d outgrown the house and moved away. Maybe it’s this early shade deprivation that explains my attraction for cool, dappled glades; for fern and hollow; for the quiet, naturally air-conditioned woods. Each spring we extol the return of flower and leaf. Shouldn’t we also celebrate the return of shade?
