Autumn Melancholy

Autumn makes me melancholy. Not sad, exactly. It just leaves me with a “grasping” feeling.

Around the beginning of August, I start to feel that I’m grasping at the lazy, hazy summer days, when we all stay up late-late, only to sleep in late-late the next morning. The days where going to the pool is the most exhausting thing we do all day…or we might go to the zoo on a weekday without worrying what the kids will miss in school. Summertime finds red-faced munchkins running through my house, looking for a popcicle, and schlumpy teenagers playing music too loud, yelling at the X-Box, and poking their heads in the pantry. Summer days, everyone always wakes up refreshed and no one is overwhelmed. Good moods abound in my house during summer vacation.

But then it’s over. We head to the store to buy notebook paper and #2 pencils, new sneakers and shirts free of playground stains. We attend Open House, meet the new school bus driver, drag out the backpacks and lunchboxes, and then I’m left wondering how my kids are yet another year older.

Then the nights start to cool down. We grab a jacket on an evening out and sleep with the windows open. The smell of burning leaves is on the air and the fireflies dwindle to none. The cornstalks turn brown, waiting to be harvested, pumpkins and gourds turn up in the grocery, and scarecrows dwell on front porches.

And then, one by one, the trees begin their betrayal. First, it’s just a lightening of the green, making me wonder if it’s really happening at all, but before I can decide I see that the poplars are half-naked, their leaves in a crackly brown skirt below them. It makes me more aware of the others, and every day I see less green and more yellow…orange...red…brown. The leaves fall off the trees at an alarming rate - an illustration of time passing.

It leaves me grasping for my youth. For college football and road trips. For tiny waists and smiles free of crow’s feet. For worries no larger than my next exam and houses no bigger than a studio. For babies I can still rock to sleep and bribe with lollipops and games.

Some people feel Time more sharply on their birthdays, but Autumn is my meter.

Thank You, PO Smith!

Good Lord! Look how 11 days passes in the blink of an eye. For all you know, I went camping 2 weekends ago and never came back. For all you know, I went hiking alone and now am lost and wandering among the sycamore trees and limestone quarries of Central Indiana, dazed and confused from a bump on the head after a particularly nasty run-in with a rabid raccoon!*

But no worries. I am Okie-Dokie. We camped without incident, and it turns out that Noodle is a Grade A Camper & Hiker! The kids absolutely had a blast. They swam in the pool...they fished on the lake for about 5 hours one morning with nary a bite...they went for a geode-hunting hike and found some beauts...they cooked over an open flame...they made s'mores (which were excellent, I might add)...and they explored a cave. After 3 days in the near-wilderness, Noodle woke up and the first words out of her mouth were, "I don't want to go home today!" Who knew? I guess maybe we need to camp more...

*Those who spent time overseas on the DOD's dime will know that I know better than to hike alone. I might not have were it not for the info-mercials on AFN. I must have seen 500 times, "Petty Officer Smith" going for a hike alone in the woods without telling anyone where he was, and then proceeding to fall off a log and break his leg. He might have died were it not for a Friendly Park Ranger who spotted his truck. The moral of the story: When you hike alone, park your SUV where someone will see it.

Camping

Tomorrow, Mom and Dad are taking the kids and I camping for the holiday weekend. They bought a camper-trailer-thing last spring, that sleeps 5 (6?). (I'm not sure if Dad read the fine print, but I'm sure it had to have said 5 midgets. Not 5 full-size people.)

So I should be fine.

I don't even remember the last time I was camping. High School? Before that? Girl Scouts? I don't know, but suffice it to say, "A long time. A reeeeeeeeeeeally loooooooooooong time." I am excited and alarmed at the same time.

What I DO remember, is that Every Single Time I've EVER been camping, it has rained on me. I know, everyone says that. But for me, it is Truth. Family camping trips in the tent, circa 1973. Rain. Brownie camping trips circa 1976. Rain. Junior Girl Scout camping trips circa 1978. More rain. Come to think of it, that's probably why I stopped camping.

So, dear Internet, if South-Central Indiana needs rain this weekend, please alert them that it's on the way.

S'mores.....mmmmmmm.