AUTUMN

Dear Caelan,

One of the four seasons will become your favorite in the next few years. As I did not grow up in Northern Virginia, I don't know which season will suit your heart best. My season is autumn. Your mother might attempt to wedge herself into the story by saying that she and I always became close in autumn and broke up in spring. Not to burst her bubble, but other women might say the same of me, or of other men. Autumn is a time when primeval human glands stimulate us to find mates to cuddle up to for warmth against the threatening cold of winter, whereas we feel fiercely independent and independently fierce when spring promises warmth.

Louisiana summers began in early April, on the day when we first walked barefoot across Adger's blacktop and had enough tar stick to our feet to make sneakers unnecessary. We knew then that the pool would be uncovered any day. Moths appeared and waited impatiently for tardy night to fall, so that they could begin their flirtations with the carport light. Mornings became two separate creatures, the first a time of growing light; the second a time of growing humidity. That tropical shimmer to the air, marking a time when one could see rainbows whether it had rained or not, flopped down on us around 9am, and no one over ten years old who could avoid it went outside. As it was a time relinquished to children and I was none too sociable, I didn't care for it.

Winter was exciting once. We had ice on the fishpond for several straight days, then real snow, nearly enough to cover the dead brown pampas grass of northwest Louisiana. Granddaddy knocked together a scrap lumber and plumbing pipe sled in the toolshed that had at one time been a chicken coop. The grownups broke out the Bell & Howell 8mm movie camera, bourbon, rope, scotch, mittens, gin and carkeys, tied the sled to the rear bumper of an Oldsmobile, and dragged the children all over town on roads so icy, they hardly sparked at all from our progress. Uncle Jack has had these films converted to VHS format, but his second wife doesn't let him watch them at home, because his first wife was still alive and prominently featured in them. Winter was almost wholly something that happened to other people.

Spring was Easter and meteorological eccentricity. Never a coherent season, it was a balmy 24-hour excitement that came between damp chill and damp heat sporadically through two months before blooming into summer. Depending on one's perspective, it could be winter's boastful lie or a promise summer was not yet prepared to keep.

In autumn, I could play longer than at any other time of the year. Hampered by neither the sticky heat of July nor the heavy clothing of February, I played tetherball, a good solitary game, for hours while the dry pampas grass of northwestern Louisiana crunched underfoot. I could take paper and crayons to a front porch or driveway and draw without having the crayons melt or the paper become wet. School was a minor inconvenience in that it took away a lot of my reading time, but there were compensations. I didn't object to the classroom, the three block walk to and from A.C. Steere Elementary introduced me to solitary, thoughtful walks, marvelous, irreplacable times of heightened mental acuity and fantasy. I joined with the other kids at recess to climb to the roof of the scout hut on the schoolgrounds, tear off shingles and throw them at children from different classes.

School time also taught me how much I had figured out on my own, for I ended summer vacations wiser for having had time to learn on my own than some of the other students would be for for classroom months. I don't mean to brag, my daughter, but I did read Gone With The Wind and figure out multiplication between second and third grade.

Whatever season you choose as your own will be the time that can't be tarnished. If you believe in God, God's presence will be strongest then. If you believe in yourself, you will be strongest then.

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