The Summer Fled ...

I don't like seeing leaves on the ground--alongside the road. In the air. It was only a few days ago, you know, that we had the A-C running pretty much every day (and night). And now? Our furnace is running today. No more shorts-and-sandals (good news for people who have to look at me in the coffee shop) and hello, blue jeans and sneakers and jackets.

Sneakers--a word I never used growing up. Real Boys (Oklahoma boys, like me) called them "tennis shoes." And they were black. With high tops.

Anyway, as you get older, it becomes increasingly hard not to see metaphor in the changing of seasons. Autumn: leaves falling, flowers fading, colder temperatures, more darkness ... hmmm: I wonder what that could symbolize? (If I think of a happy answer, I'll tell you later.)

Changing seasons had a much different significance when I was a boy. The end of the summer meant: no more bicycle, no more baseball, no more run-around-with-my-friends-and-do-what-I want.

But autumn did mean ... school. Which I pretty much dreaded back then. We didn't have a lot of homework when I was in elementary school (or maybe I just never bothered to do it?), but we did have a lot of what was called "seat work": worksheets, workbooks--stuff to do while the teacher caught a breather. It was dreary and deadly--repetitive. But--unlike our two grandsons today--I did not have a bunch of state-mandated standardized tests looming ahead of me. Just the thought of more dreariness the next day ... endless ...

I remember in 7th grade having the stunning thought that my public school life was only half over. It seemed as if I'd been in school forever, and now more forever lay before me like an unbending desert highway ...

Oklahoma winters were not that bad--and not that good. Not a lot of snow (I didn't even know what a Snow Day was until we moved to Ohio as I was about to begin 7th grade). Just colder and unpleasant.

But spring--even then--was HOPE! The end of school! Warmer weather! Bikes and baseball!

And ahead lay the prospect of an Endless Summer--and surely this year the fall will never come, and warmth and light will go on and on and on and on ... And surely no one I love will ever die ...

(PS--I did not think of a "happy answer.")