There once was a time where a song proclaimed that everything has a season. Nature has seasons, the weather and certainly a human life has seasons. While the weather and nature are seasons that recur for us our seasons are a metaphorical one time prospect. In that metaphorical range our spring is our time of birth and newness, a perfect season to be a kid. Everything is a curiosity, everything is there for you to learn and embrace. Even your dreams are new and uncomplicated by the world as yet. Of course you can take it from here, your young adulthood the summer of your life. A time where you should be growing and developing, maturing if you will into the person that your years have brought you to be. Then we have our falls. The time when leaves turn color in the same way that our hair gray’s or the wrinkles on our faces begin to deepen and take up permanent residence. And of course what follows is the winter. This is a time of quiet and reflection. A time when the cold of the outdoors brings us to the warmth of hearth and home. A time that can be immeasurably rewarding watching as new beginnings in your life come through family and friends. It can also be a time of intermittent sadness as others run the course of their winters and move into time past.
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Today is my Dad’s 81st birthday. When I called him this morning to wish him my blessings we of course as always move into other topics. I have to say that I am very blessed. In all these years he has not lost his sense of honor and for that has always kept my trust but more importantly he has never once lost his sense of humor toward life. There are a few observations that we share now . . .more it seems than when we were both in different seasons of our lives. Usually they center about how you are truly too soon old and too late smart or as he say’s it in a very long island Jewish sounding voice,
“Too soon old, to late smaarrrt!”
When I was young I knew it all. Nothing you older people knew was anything I hadn’t heard of before. I was for all intent and purpose omnipotent. I was the King of all I surveyed.
“What a crock of crap!”
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Being old or the change of seasons does something to us or at least has profoundly effected me. For one now that I look at my Dad it is very easy to see him when he was younger than I am now. I can still smell his Brut lingering in his bathroom in the home that we shared. Always just a bit too much before he went off to work. It is a smell that will be in my memories for the rest of my life. I can see the first day I ever saw him, giving kids in my “neighborhood” rides on a white Honda 305 motorcycle. I remember my first ride simply because it meant so much to me.
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Today our comparison of life was a metaphoric roll of toilet paper. All of us have probably noticed that when you put that roll on it turns slowly and there are many sheets. It’s at the spring of the toilet paper season. Yet all too soon the roll begins to spin faster as it’s life of 1000 sheets begins to literally unwind. Being in the winter of ones life is just like being the last 200 or so sheets on that roll. You know you aren’t going to get anymore so you use the sheets sparingly. Maybe you change your shorts more often to conserve. Yet when you use that roll it spins, faster and faster till you come to that last sheet wrapped around the tube holding on for dear life with a small glue strip. The only barrier from becoming compost. And that’s certainly another parallel between that roll and us. We too will eventually become compost, fodder for the changing of seasons beyond our comprehension.
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All of this writing that has nothing to do with the seasons that I want to write about and those are the seasons of nature. Maybe too much of what I feel right now has to do with the seasons of life and certainly the seasons of nature. In the spring of my life I loved the changes of the year. In the spring the smells of new life and new growth were everywhere. Even the very air that I’d breathe smelled brand new. As if nature had put it through a giant air purifier just for me. The summer was swimming and a time for all things outside. When we lived in a town the rule was indoors as soon as the street light’s came on. Even then when the sun would not go down till after eight p.m. the lights on a dusk we would still all linger on my stoop or on one of the other kids. Depending on who was outside you could have two or three groups of kids that ten minutes ago were en masse playing one thing or another and now we huddled in our smaller groups nearest our homes so that when our parents came out to yell for us we could look at them quizzically like we’d done nothing wrong.
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Winter has now passed here in the mid-eastern part of the country. The new smells of clean air are accompanied by the birth of the early season insects and the start of budding on the trees. During the evening you can hear the geese honking as their formation flies overhead heading back to their northern homes. When I was young I loved the winter. I would sled, have snowball fights and do all the other wonderful things that kids find to do when their world outside becomes white. When young you take advantage of time. You take advantage of being outdoors and you certainly took advantage of play.
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Now winter is nothing more than a nuisance. It is a time where I seem to believe it does not snow as much as it did when I was a kid and the winters now just bring icy cold air that blows like a wind machine knocking over people, tree limbs and power lines. When it does snow instead of snowball fights and building snow forts I look forward to shoveling and then re-shoveling once the plows decide to fill the driveway with the road snow. This dance goes on as long as the winter snows prevail. Then I wonder about the drivers here in this area. They live here but can’t drive for crap. How can so many people be so unaccustomed to driving in winter conditions when they live for half the year in winter conditions? I do not ski and not really into snowmobiles. I no longer enjoy the cold. I have never enjoyed this daylight savings time deal either. Losing daylight during a time when many of us are housebound is probably not the best prescription for curing the blues. This is the worst of it. The downtime. Time that you would use if the outdoors were more neighborly in her temperatures.
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When I was a kid I used to wonder about the "retiree’s" all moving or so it seemed at the time to Florida to get away from the winters and enjoy the sunshine. I remember visiting my grandmother once upon a time and reveling in the sun, the different plants, the sand and the lizards. I think maybe after spending so much time making a life in the northern part of the country there comes a time as it seems that time has come for me where I no longer want to live in a place where I lose five to six months of a years of my life having to huddle for the most part indoors. I find that I no longer want to deal with drivers that still do not have a clue as how winter weather changes the handling on their vehicles. I do not want to shovel one more dram of snow.
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Maybe that’s my answer for seasons. Maybe we are to make seasons of our life flow with the seasons of nature. Maybe there comes a time when you want to once again take advantage of the sun as I did when I was a kid without having to worry over another change of seasons. It could be that I tire of having to pack and unpack clothes changing my wardrobe as time changes the weather. Perhaps it is just there comes a time when you understand how very valuable each day is and want to take full advantage of those days. In another time it would be easy to stay here. But now, I grow older and the fun that the winter brought has long past through decades of shoveling, snow blowing and bundling. The days of waking in darkness and eating dinner in darkness have lost their appeal. Maybe I just miss wearing shorts?
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For too long I've messed with the wiring in my head. Now it shorts out more oft than not. But at my age I just sit and enjoy the sparks. RJM '07
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