By Alex Berger
The First Red Leaf of Autumn
When the leaves come fluttering down – All dressed in gold and red,
I think the wind is playing nurse, – And putting them to bed!
– Clara L. Crawford
The goldenrod is yellow, The corn is turning brown,
The trees in apple orchards…With fruit are bending down;
By all these lovely tokens…September's days are here,
With summer's best of weather…And autumn's best of cheer.
– Anon.
Two loves have I at this time of year – the summer and autumn seasons. During the month of September, I have mixed emotions because it marks the ending of summer (sadness) and the beginning of autumn (happiness).
Last year was particularly trying for me. On one bright August day, I wistfully looked out my kitchen window. There, in all its boldness, was a single red leaf on a tree – green leaves were all around it – blowing in the wind. This single defiant and brilliant red leaf made me stop and take notice.
It reminded me of a movie several years ago. The heroine, in a limousine, was arriving for a mid-August reception. She daringly was wearing a red velvet gown and looked stunningly beautiful. Everyone at the affair, wearing plain summer attire, stared at her in disbelief. She was overdressed, they thought, in that brilliant red, for it was not quite the season for velvet. Similarly, the single red leaf outside my kitchen window was daringly overdressed for August, as it shouted the news that summer was ending.
But who or what is to say at what precise moment one season ends and another begins? Who says summer has to go away just because of the arrival of the vernal equinox or the tilt of the Earth on its axis? What exact day, hour, minute does it all begin to end? I kept looking for that elusive moment, and the culprit that mandated the season start changing. I kept looking at that one red leaf in a tree of green in wonderment.
I noticed something else. What happened to the mosquitoes? They were here the entire summer and now they buzzed off. Who told them to go? I never liked them. But as long as they were annoying and stinging me, singing in my ears, eluding me, and then finding their way back into my house despite the window screens, I knew summer was still here.
And who had turned on the nightly streetlights so early? Didn't they know when the lights come on too soon, every children's party is spoiled? The kids, noticing the flicker of the lights, knew it was time to pack up and go home. What happened to the lazy, hazy, crazy, days of summer slowly fading into crickets and fireflies? I thought it would go on and on.
To keep summer going, I decided to look for patio furniture. It was still August and I thought I would find a big umbrella to shade my deck. “Sorry,” the salesman told me, “They are all gone. We sell out in June.” So it must be department stores that decided the summer should end too soon. Dejected, I left that store and walked through a shopping center. There were little boys lined up to get their long, summer hair shorn. I can't believe the boys (and their parents) had conspired against summer also. I also saw little girls sitting in their summer clothes, getting their hair twisted and ready for school. One little girl was not smiling. Did she also know that summer was over?
When I went grocery shopping, I noticed that the honeydews were no longer sweet and the cantaloupes tasted like bottled water. When fruit lose their sugar, it meant that the summer was over? Who took their sugar away? Probably the same people who made the mosquitoes disappear and turned on the streetlights.
I then heard the bell of an ice cream truck clanging. It was a weak clang, as though the driver didn't have it in him to ring the bell any louder. Not one child bothered to stop him. So the ice cream truck made a U-turn and drove away. He didn't even wait for me to grab a dollar and run to him, yelling that I wanted ice cream. Didn’t he know I believed it was still summer?
We had turned the air conditioning off that evening. A step that seemed improbable just weeks before when Gloria and I were sweating because the compressor broke. But the new chill riding the night air, mixed with the artificial air blowing through the vents was too much. When I turned the A/C off, did that tell the summer to go away?
Defiantly, I marched into Gloria's pantry and found an empty mustard jar still reeking with the scent of summer cookouts. The smell was inviting. I unscrewed the lid, walked outside, and figured out where the wind was blowing. I filled the jar with the last breaths of summer. I thought if I closed the lid tight enough, I could keep a taste of summer in it, even if no one else can see it. I labeled it the Summer of 2002 and stored it on a shelf.
The red leaf was still hanging there in its velvet gown. I held the jar filled with summer air over the red leaf and requested that it please put on a sundress. No matter what it thinks, it was not yet the season for velvet and wouldn't be, as long as I had summer locked up in my jar.
Goonish Helfen! Like clockwork, summer turned to autumn, autumn turned to winter, winter turned to spring, spring turned to summer, and here I am again lamenting summer's impending demise. As I awaited the arrival of autumn, I took the jar off the shelf, unscrewed the top, took a long whiff of the escaping Summer 2002 air, and began looking out my window to find another red leaf amongst the green.
With that said, readers, join me now in ringing in Autumn with an appropriate toast:
“Here’s to Eve – the mother of our race, She hung some leaves over a very personal place.
Here’s to Adam – the father of us all. Imagine his delight, when the leaves began to fall!”
Reach columnist Alex Berger by e-mail at imesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 140.
