The fall equinox found the best seat in the house. It entered the room with a pumpkin spice loaf and a hint of seasonal depression. I never know whether to grieve or celebrate its advent, deluded by its novelty that I know will peter out like the sounds of cicadas in June.
So, instead, I stare into trees and give them personalities. Some are impulsive for change, eager to return to dormancy, to shake off some excess. Others stand deeply rooted, skeptical, and say, “It’s not time yet,” after having been burned before.
I get it. Trusting cool, quiet mornings is hard when the days scorch you.
On their terms, leaves curl up and fall to the ground to decompose, so the trees could return what was given to them. Some lean into change, others stand tall and tower over smaller vegetation, envious of their evergreen equals.
What the rest of autumn lacks, the anticipation —the transition — the subtle interval holds: yellow school buses roaming through neighborhoods, kids idling at bus stops poring over their sneakers, and cars imbuing interstates and off-ramps. Mornings feel a lot different; sunsets have shifted a few degrees over, and crowds seem subdued.
These observational qualities of the impending season will fall tragically to a collection of oversights if not noticed. But if you listen, there is an exchange to be had.
The foliage inchoately turns ochre, yet too quickly for us to see, as preoccupations like football season and fall recipes pool at the forefront of our minds. Porch lights flip on a quarter before five, and gutters end up littered with sienna-colored leaves by December. To some, the seasonal shift feels like an old friend leaving you at the bottom of the escalators at LAX. To others, it’s a vacant terminal on a Christmas Eve dawn, greeted by that same companion.
But back home, the climate belies this one. There, the sun overstays its welcome on melancholic days, and autumn feels more like early spring. I think of my aging parents. I think of their brittle bodies. Mom’s salt and pepper gray fringe and deep red lipstick. Sisters, nieces, nephews, and old friends are aging twice as fast in a single year. The longer I’m away from home, the shorter the time it seems I have with them. It’s hard to be away; it’s harder to go back. The closer I am to finding solace, the further I am from my roots. Homemade adobo hits differently after a four-hour flight in recycled air, on top of years of unappreciation for its flavor profile or the love put into it.
If conversations I never had growing up were swept under the rug, then so much is being said now. Or I’m a better listener. If I dial down the noise and stop fidgeting, I will learn that these conversations were always had… through food, at overstimulating loud family gatherings, and through Mom’s sacrifices.
Several seasons ago, we cared too much; we held standards and grudges. Compared toys and the shapes of our thought patterns and professions. In this season of life, we hold our last bit of savings, feeling like a sell-out, and prefer silence over sound. We wallow in guilt-ridden drives home, thinking a phone call should be made. We miss people, even the Mazda driver we were following who just turned off on the last exit – thankful for their consistent and smooth braking patterns that made the dreadful commute tolerable. Have a nice life, I say.
I worry I’m a patchy correspondent, knowing I’m hardly a friend, and I’m running low on excuses, always blaming the ephemeral seasons.
The trees tell me to shake it off. The seasons call this the interim. Friends say it will pass. My son tells me without telling me to be in the present. But as I straddle the line between here and there and fact and fiction, these reductive interpretations feel like a wool turtleneck worn in 80-degree weather.
I blink. My eyelids fold in like an accordion, and I see my son, hailing proudly from his corner chair with yogurt in his hair and a marred iPad to his left. He cracks a grin, likely plotting trouble while I sit back and decide if he should have this one today.
On days like this, I’m seven years old, waiting for Mom, hoping she doesn’t work double. Dad’s still in Burbank, idling in ungodly traffic on the 101. I’m home, but homesick, with leftovers in the microwave, and the only light turned on in the house is the second-floor hallway. Still, a single digit number, blowing in game cartridges, repositioning the metal antenna on the kitchen television, and unaware that 30 years later, the home I grew up in would be torched to the ground.
Several seasons later, I’m 37, a weeping willow. My son, a palm tree exploding with sunshine. A spoon strikes the dining room table, and I wake from a nostalgic stupor. I tuck my ruminations under the pillow next to my favorite Polly Pocket. Feeling immensely overwhelmed by a barrage of notifications, boggled by when I subscribed to them. I clear them all in one sweep without having looked at them.
What will find me, will. What won’t, won’t.
I wipe my son’s hands, wondering how I’ll get through today. While I recall peers my age who’ve bolted from the idea of parenthood, I shift my focus to this resplendent creature before me, who I hope will never know what is truly going on.
I stare at trees hoping to understand the world around me, life, and family. I study weather patterns maybe too closely than the average person, thinking something is in the air, but there isn’t. I stare at strangers conversing, wondering if we are all just having conversations with ourselves. Is life a series of back-and-forths? Having too much time on our hands? Too many thoughts on our minds? saying something only to take it back? Are we just here for a good time? Not for a long time? I stand still in this seasonal cycle to understand my son and his bouts of dysregulation.
Let him have his season, I say. Then let him enter the next one.
