Autumn

Autumn is not my favourite time of year. Oh it has its beauty alright. Sure we get the leaves changing colours and stuff. And there are some really really nice days here and there.

The word “autumn” sounds kind of poetic, doesn’t it. The English, that is people from England, they say “autumn,” but here in North America I guess we say “fall.” Still, I like to call it autumn, but then I’m partial to certain anglo expression: I wear trousers, I eat biscuits, etc.

So autumn, that’s actually our holiday season. People try to neutralize Christmas by wishing one another “season’s greetings” instead of Merry Christmas; but our season is autumn, usually mid-September, this year early October. People should wish us Season’s Greetings in autumn I think. But after we get through the high holidays, which can be intense, we come to Succot, and we eat outside, well we’re surrounded by walls but it’s still outside, and so when it’s nice out it’s the quintessential autumn experience.

But that’s a bone, compensation for the fact that summer is over and we are transitioning to winter, and winter in Canada is not a trivial exercise.

Here is a story. It’s a true story about a vacation we did one year, my family did, and at the time I think that my family was three people.

We headed straight south. It was near the end of August, and I guess it was 1986. One hour to the border, then into the US. We did not take the usual route which if I remember is Interstate 29; we headed south on highway 59, which is less used, with less traffic, and I remember stopping at some playground, in some town, about an hour south of the US border, and our son played and we sat and had lunch, and it was a beautiful sunny Sunday morning.

And so we carried on, to Detroit Lakes, to Bemidji, to Minneapolis. And when it was time to go home, we made a point of going back up the same highway, thinking we’d stop in Detroit Lakes maybe for a picnic if it was nice, take a nice leisurely ride back home.

So we headed out from the twin cities, and I remember that it was September 1, and that’s still officially summer, but everyone knows how bogus that is, September 1 is fall, autumn, and no climatologist or meteorologist can convince me otherwise. So here it was September, and it was a cold, miserable, rainy day, and I noticed as we headed back north up highway 59, and we passed that same playground we’d stopped at only a week before, and we just passed it without stopping, there was nobody there and no kids playing, and it seemed like the whole world had changed, changed from happy summer holiday to rainy cold miserable autumn.

I could make this into a metaphor but I won’t. Because I’ve learned that the misery that the world threw at me that day is bogus, there is no misery except what we choose to let in. So let autumn, and even winter, do its worst. I’m ready.