Changing Seasons

With the traditional close of summer last weekend and the official close only a week and a half away, people are starting to gear up for fall. Autumnal colors have cropped up in displays and advertisements, and Halloween accoutrement are beginning to appear in stores everywhere. Seasons are changing.

I know a lot of people are somewhat saddened by the passing of summer, especially those who have to go back to school and those who see fall as little more than a harbinger of another winter. But fall is my favorite season. It has been for as long as I can remember. Summer was always great – full of days spent in the sun and water, watching clouds and rolling in the grass – but autumn brought the year’s best weather and brightest colors. It meant going back to school and re-joining friends I had not seen all summer (and, yes, I was one of the few children who didn’t mind school). Fall also meant the sweets and candies of Halloween, the fantastic dishes of Thanksgiving (as well as the leftovers for the days that followed), and, if we were lucky, the first snow.

Now my point of view is different, but my enjoyment and excitement have hardly changed. Autumn contains the last opportunities given by the living seasons – begun in the first green shoots of spring and finished in the last colored leaves of fall. It is the last chance to get out there and shake a leg before the frosts become icicles hanging from the eaves and a howling winter wind drives us – and most other animals – inside for shelter and warmth. It is a celebration of life, of having survived thus far.

It is also a reminder that winter is just around the corner. It is a last chance to settle warm-weather affairs and prepare for the cold-weather challenges to come. It is a reminder that to all things there is a season, and that someday Death will nip us as easily as frost does flowers. It heralds an end of things, but also the hope of new beginnings, however far off they may seem. And what a way to go: all beauty and color and light before that last long darkness.

I love fall. I hope you will enjoy it as well.

Armchair Swimmers

I have returned from my trip, which took longer than I expected and was much harder to re-settle from than I’d anticipated.

My first full day back, I didn’t even bother to unpack. I grabbed a couple folding chairs, a good friend, and headed for the creek. The weatherman had called for clouds all day but they were gone by ten o’clock so we waded into the creek in full sunshine and set up our chairs where the water ran wide and shallow. I jostled a position upstream of a large rock I planned to use as a footrest for my feet and my friend dug a hole for his. We lounged, surrounded by gurgling brightness, and talked for hours about anything we could think of.

Sports, religion, politics, the economy, the future… I love good conversations with good friends. They keep me sane.

We finally retired in the afternoon, grabbed a bite of picnic lunch sitting under great pine trees, and discovered we were sunburned. Apparently neither of us were as tanned as we would have liked to believe. We spent the rest of the day in the shade, edging along gravel bars to follow the shadows. At times neither of us would talk for an hour or more.

Sometimes silence is perfect conversation, too. And it is wholly necessary for my well-being, the more the better.

There is no silence, of course. The air was full of sound from the creek and birdsong and wind in the trees and insects busily buzzing at their errands. But I consider that music, and also an essential.

As the day drew its shades we headed home, a good day gone all too quickly. But more lie ahead. That is the important thing.

Lessons From Sam

Several years ago I made a big move, started a new job, and met people who would forever change me. It’s funny sometimes how the people around you can effect your life so quietly, so subtly that you don’t even notice it, perhaps for years. For me, no one changed my life like Sam.

I was fresh off a small college campus, still wet behind the ears and, truth be told, a little green around the gills at the chance I was taking. Eighteen hundred miles from home, fourteen hundred miles from the nearest person I knew, I had an old car, a new job, and one big wild hope. My first week on the job I met Sam.

I worked for a small outfit owned by a sweet, aging couple who knew the value of a dollar and frugally kept as many as they could. To that end, they hired Sam to mow the business’s grounds and do odd jobs as needed. “He’s a little slow,” the owner told me in preparation. “And he doesn’t mean any harm, but he’s a big guy. Sometimes he doesn’t know his own strength.” I immediately thought of the character George in Of Mice and Men and was a bit afraid. I didn’t relish the thought of working around someone with reduced mental capacity and potentially dangerous machinery. All nerves and ugly imaginary scenarios, I waited for him to appear.

When he did, a large mop of dark hair towering above his companions, I watched him closely to see how he acted around the owner and other workers. And discovered my fears were completely unfounded. Instead of a menacing hulk I found a polite young man who was quick to smile and who wanted to help in any way if he could. In a few weeks time, I was looking forward to his visits. My co-workers were nice enough, good people, but seeing Sam walk in was like sunshine breaking through heavy clouds. Somehow he always brought a sense of joy with him. But some of my co-workers never quite got used to him, never got over their awkwardness with him, and all I can say is that the loss was completely theirs.

Sam had a hard time with names, especially of those he didn’t see on a regular basis, but he knew the people behind them. The owner equated his mind to that of an eight-year-old and he often stuttered, especially around strangers, but was surprisingly clever at times and had a wonderful sense of humor. He was a bit backward and shy but never spoke an ill word of anything and always did the best he could. I loved Sam. He was like a big little brother to me.

I worked with Sam for three years before a change in jobs moved me out of the area. Over the next few years I visited on occasion but then moved farther away and have not been back since. I often think of Sam and wonder how he is, if he has any friends in the workers there now. I miss him. I miss his smile and his innocence and the joy he carried. The way he said my name like we hadn’t seen each other in months and he was thrilled to see me, even if we’d worked side by side the day before. I miss the pure goodness of him. In a confused and ugly world, he was such a calm and beautiful island.

And Sam taught me a lot, like not judging people before I got to know them. He taught me that some people are worthy of your trust and that an open heart feels lighter than a closed one. And that friendship is not limited by age or social class or IQ or anything else. He gave me confidence by accepting me exactly as I was; showed me that it was perfectly okay to just be myself; reminded me that great things (like happiness) can be found in small acts (like picking berries with a friend). But more than anything I think he taught me to just be happy with what I’ve got. Period.

I’ve had a lot of friends over the years, some very good close friends, but nobody was ever quite like Sam. I got to missing him again and just thought I’d share that.

The Bee

Yesterday was gorgeous here. It felt like late spring, a good three months early. Since it was so nice out, I spent part of the beautiful day in a swing, basking in the dazzling sunshine in just my shirt sleeves. The swing is free-standing, upholstered in canvas, and seats three people but I swung there to and fro alone. Or nearly. A loving cat (Bandy) came to visit, jumping into the seat and sharing my cozy cove of sun-lit swing. After an hour or so another visitor came along.

I can’t say he was a stranger – we’d met a couple hours before at a picnic lunch just across the yard – but he had only been passing through then. This time he sat a spell. On my hand. A little bee, as nice as you please, lit on my wrist and preened unhurriedly in the warm afternoon. I moved slowly, he made no threat to sting, and we spent a lovely half-hour together.

He was so very beautiful. For many long moments I studied the downy hairs on his thorax, the neat black and yellow stripes on his abdomen, his minute antennae and large dark eyes. I found myself fairly smitten. He tickled the fine hairs on my arm and hand as he ambled around, exploring the strange scape, searching for the perfect angle of sun. We had a lovely little conversation while the cat looked on in sleepy apathy. What wonderful neighbors, I thought.

But he had only stopped to visit and eventually bade us farewell. With a tiny shirring of wings he lifted off and buzzed away, headed vaguely west in the bright slant of afternoon.

I only hope I am so lucky as to enjoy more such days in the weeks and months and years to come.