So it's happened; that snap of cool wafting down the mountains, breathing the leaves up before they fall. Every year I am surprised by this time of year. I feels like summer could go forever if it wanted, its like a best friend that stays too long, you still love it, but your home is calling, your soups, your sweaters and so you slowly begin your break up with summer, everything you once found charming now grates on you, the heat, the late nights, the riff-raff that hangs out in the park behind your house, all of it bores you, you've out grown summer and you begin to get whiffs of a crackling new scent that lulls you from your former love and into the barked branch arms of another where you watch from your window as the first gold leaf, much like this sentence, mazes lazily down your sidewalk dancing in and out of fresh school shoes whipping past your front door on their way to a new teacher and other new shoes.
I love the evocation of fall:'First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month, school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school.'
And'Yet this train's whistle! The wails of a lifetime were gathered in it from other nights in other slumbering years; the howl of moon-dreamed dogs, the seep of river-cold winds through January porch screens which stopped the blood, a thousand fire sirens weeping or worse! the outgone shreds of breath, the protests of a billion people dead or dying, not wanting to be dead, their groans, their sighs, burst over the earth!' And |
All those quotes came from 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' by Ray Bradbury, and it's that last one that kills me. I am right at the beginning seeing my children run off to the secret places that will never be so secret again. I love seeing what they are seeing for the first time. Daisy, tonight in our after dinner walk said, "The air smells like fire." And we both breathed deep and she was right, and in the best way.
Where ever you are, I hope the season whispers it coming tonight and tugs you into flannel sheets or morning knitted socks and warm spiced food made from roots and gourds eaten over laughter with family reminiscing...or at the very least, I hope your air smells like fire.
