It Is Not This Day

 

Well, it happened last Saturday, as it happens every year. In Texas, or at least in the little patch where I live, Fall, what you would call real Fall, only lasts about a week or two as blazing summer transitions into gray, bleak winter. But there comes one day in that Fall …

Let me explain. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this before, not even to my brothers, but it would not greatly surprise me if they knew of it in their own ways. We Babellians are like that. The awareness of the Day has been growing on me for decades, but it only became codified, as it were, when I moved to Nolte Street.

I think the first time there was a slight perception of the Day was years ago, when I took Susan (not even a toddler yet) out to the front yard in her stroller. It was a cold, clear day, slightly breezy, and after a bit I wheeled her out by the little pecan tree, and just parked there with her. We sat, her eyes squinting a little under her baby cap in the bright sun, and just took in the sighing of the trees and the warmth of the sun. I thought at the time that, although nothing really happened, I would always remember it. And I always have.

My thoughts on Fall, my appreciation for it, were only deepened as the years passed and Tolkien became the mentor for much of my inner life. Fall was fleeting, like life; like life, it was perched between two definite states, wavering between them. The sun seems dying into the West, and ‘my spirit is crying for leaving.’ I wrote this poem once, trying to capture the feeling:

 “Far away the crows are cawing;

By our house the day is falling.

The west wind wanders by our door

And red leaves litter forest floor.

 

Black crickets play a spindly song

The dead leaves seem to dance upon.

The fields are full of harvest hay,

That gleam gold at the end of day.

 

The winter winds are far away;

We sense them in the fading rays.

They'll come as surely as a tide,

Though blazing colors cold deny.

 

Under the autumn stars the light

Is passing slowly in our sight;

Flying colors swiftly fleeting,

As the year lies slowly bleeding…”

 

Never did find a satisfactory ending for that poem. But as I said, the Day only really became codified when I moved to Nolte Street. It is my sister’s house, a large, old house that sits among large, old trees. Part of the land slopes dramatically down to a little stream, so you can gaze into a slanting hollow almost into the tops of the trees. There, as the sun sets, its beams come spilling down onto (but not into) the dark edges of the yard.

It is here, in this liminal space that I gaze on as I pass from the Guest House around to the Kitchen Porch, that the Day truly revealed itself to me.

The Day is that one day in the passing Fall that is balanced perfectly between summer and winter. The wind is cold, but it comes and goes, and the sun is hot. The grass is deep green, but the trees are gold and brown and red and fall with an audible patter. The summer birds are flying or gone in their flocks, but you may hear the screaming of hawks or the deep harsh croak of crows as they pass through the land. On the Day I feel one powerful desire, and I’ve never given in to it.

What I want on that Day is to simply go down into the hollow, where all the surrounding neighbors are out of sight, and I may as well be in the country, and just lie down. In the early days I wanted some kind of catafalque (like Aragorn lays on in Arwen’s vision when he surrenders his life, or like Mom’s sturdy old exercise table that cluttered up the kitchen for so long), but now I just want a Grand Patio Recliner (rated hardy enough to take 350 pounds). I want to just lay back, covered with a blanket (rather like the sanatorium patients in The Wind Rises), taking in the changing sky and falling leaves, snuggling down and perhaps even dozing, drifting away on the cusping wave into winter.

But I cannot; maybe I even should not. I have miles to go before I sleep, and I move on. Is this thanatos? Or just old autumnal instincts kicking in, akin to my impulse to pick up acorns at this time of year? Anyway, the Day has fleeted by, and we seem well into the cold grey weeks now. Time to celebrate and fight against the Old Bear of Winter, and there's chili to be made for supper.