Well, at least the leaves are pretty

The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold

Autumn is ‘icumin in, lude sing – “drat!”’

I guess I don’t fully mean that. The Virginia Creeper on the side fence, for example, is mounting the most magnificent display I’ve seen it able to muster. And the maples are turning red and gold. Not so magnificently as they manage to muster in Eastern Canada or New England, but we have a milder winter, so there’s the trade-off.

But, of the seasons, I must confess that autumn is my least favorite. To me fall must be endured, but rarely cherished. As spring is rare prime-rib and summer is garlic-buttered lobster, autumn is the ‘liver’ of seasons. Not unspeakably awful (I quite like liver with bacon and onions) but rarely inspired. It all begins with the Labor Day weekend. No matter how long we’ve been away from school, with Labor Day comes the feeling that it’s all over. That was it. Summer, that blessed season, is gone and, to paraphrase Shelley, “If autumn comes, can winter be far behind?”

We fool ourselves with autumn. We fool ourselves because the season is a chameleon. One day it is bright and crisp and sunny, even after a frosty morning, and the leaves are swirling about our feet, and the kids in the park across the street are playing touch football, and all seems relatively right with the world. But, the next day the southeast winds announce their presence at 3 a.m. and by the time of arising, the rain is pounding horizontally against the front window and the gloom never reaches the candlepower of a summer twilight. And then one day, in November usually, the days of the southeast winds mass together in a continuum, and sometimes there is sleet mixed in with the rain. True autumn has begun.

Meanwhile, the trees and Virginia Creeper have been denuded of those lovely colors and all is dull drabs and browns and the only consolation that manifests itself is that at least the lawn needn’t be cut. Perversely, this realization only leaves me with a longing for the first cutting of springtime because when that happens I’ll know I’ve made it through.

Of course, by the time Scorpio moves into Sagittarius territory then Christmas, New Year’s and all that stuff rears an ugly hydra head. No, I’m sorry, I do not like Christmas. Oh, I like ‘my’ Christmas, and ‘our’ Christmas, but I must confess I loathe what the season has become. And New Year’s is, to me, beyond comprehension as anything resembling festivity, but is otherwise a mandated two-bit drunk in which one is forced to kiss people one would rather not, rather than getting to kiss people one would delight in.

I have often wondered what it would be like to live in a place where there is no autumn. Hawaii, for example. I think it would be heavenly. Albeit Hawaii does have actual seasons and the plumeria isn’t always in bloom, but there is little drama about it. The Trade Winds and storms shift to the north of the islands and there is more rain – sometimes much more rain – but it never gets biting and cold, and if one wants a day on the sand, one merely goes to the south of the islands and the water will be as delicious in November as it was in August.

A few years ago we were sitting in an outside coffee joint in Princeville on Kauai. It was April. The girl serving the coffee offered the thought that it was a beautiful day that day and that it “finally feels like spring.” I was amazed. But it’s all relative, I guess.

Now, even though I thoroughly believe in living in the moment, I do have the consoling thought that in a little more than two months it will be January 1st and I can genuinely look forward to heavenly spring.

Meanwhile, the Virginia Creeper is looking good – today.