The Days Dwindle Down to a Precious Few
Oh it’s a long, long while, from May to December,
But the days grow short when you reach September…
The seemingly endless weeks of heat, canopied trees, buzzing bugs and wet bathing suits are finally coming to a close. Now as the earth has done for more cycles than can be fathomed, it will begin to lean away from Mother Sun like a 6th-grader avoiding a kiss, and bring on one of the two seasons of change - and a chance for us dreamers to reflect on the annual shedding of life that occurs.
My feeling is that autumn is the more emotional of the biannual transformations. When spring arrives to green up the neighborhood and unfurrow the brow of those who have languished under months of dim light, the cliche’ is that all is new - all is reborn. I’m sure that cheers up the frosted crowd hovering at the local public house. The problem with this bit of happiness is that we mortals typically have no recollection of our birth, not to mention the inchoate stages preceding the blessed event. Birth just hits us by surprise, and by the time we are grown we have only vague memories of what it was like to be as young as a warm day in March. We can’t relate to a season that cannot be relived by us.
But now as we mourn the demise of shady naps, shorts and flip-flops, ice cream runs and summer crushes we experience a more personal emotion - the season of loss. Our mood is confirmed by the drifting piles of leaves against the doorstep, by the sudden chill across the back when we forget to bring a jacket, by the abrupt darkness that blankets the landscape before we have a chance to walk the dog.
The span of life measured by one summer has passed, never to return.
Those who sit too long outside in the last gasp of a September night may sense the connection between the coming cold and their own remaining days. The two events announce themselves with clarity and precision, like a campanile knelling the final hour of the day: gone…gone…gone…. Before long, before the dew dampens our feet, we wander back inside. From the street a quiet square of yellow can be seen glowing into the solitary darkness - then it disappears.
Summer slams into us as hard as a back-slapping cousin up for a visit. It is a powerful season that demands attention, muscles and planning; it flings us upside down and fills us with sand; it roars with colors from a thousand delights and never asks once if we’re ready to stop. For twelve glorious weeks it owns us.
Then it dies. Autumn sweeps the last remnants of it into forgotten corners and we stand at the window, quivering with mortality.
For just one moment this month, as supple green arms all around us turn brittle and begin to fall, let us turn and see ourselves once again in summer - under the arms of our tanned parents, running across a toasted field toward a meadowlark, soaked from the river or from rain, surrounded by friends. The sound of our laughter is strong. It will carry us far into the months ahead, providing a lasting warmth against the fading light.
