End of the Season

Tomorrow marks the start of Autumn or, since I'm a half-empty glass kind of guy, the end of summer. I don't know when it started, and I don't really remember when I first noticed it, but the seasons don't last as long as they used to, at least not the ones I like. Just call me Melvin Morose (as opposed to Gibson or Laird; we're all starting to share a hairline, guys).

As a kid in New Jersey, I have memories of snow in the backyard in our house in Belford, taller than I was (the part about being shorter than I am now always slips my mind) and shovelling pathways across and throughout it that looked like rabbit runs. We lived near my Mom's older sister, Anne and her husband, Chief (his real name was Donald- something I did not know until after he was dead; he died long after his wife died of cancer) and their children, my cousins, Donna (a year older than I), Diane (two days younger than me!), Daria (not the MTV one) and Chip (whose name was also Donald-I guess Chief, Too, wasn't much of an option even in the days of black and white TV and no Internet (or computers except for those UNIVAC behemoths, bigger than a house)). Even then, no matter how long the visit lasted, it ended too soon.

When we drove home from their house we used to pass what looked like a college, but it was a prep school with very snooty lettering on its white sign that I understood to say "Crayon Hall Academy"-turns out, not quite. Talk about "Every day's the end of days for some." A lifetime later, as a student in what proved to be the last graduating class of Carteret Academy for Boys, a suity and snooty place itself, thank you very much, I got knocked out, cold, in their field house driving for a layup during a varsity basketball game and came to on the bus heading back to our school. Nice people. (I got credit for the bucket; I checked with the scorer.)

We moved to Wanamassa, which is why I smiled reading my brother's notes the other morning while drinking my morning Fanta, which is when I first discovered the Beach Boys' Endless Summer wasn't and where I started grade school. I can still remember trying to make myself understood to my mother about 'but I went yesterday!' when I discovered there was more to this school thing. Turns out, going was one of the few things in fifty-six years I was any good at. I should have majored in "Bus" with a minor in "lunch line".

I was almost going to count the summers, falls, winters and springs since then but that would very much harsh anyone's buzz, so I'll just note it's a lot but also concede no matter how many more are yet to come, they will not be enough. Sometimes it takes a Hurricane Party to really grasp that. It's how we are, I think, as a species--we want what we want while missing what we had and worrying about we've yet to receive. Just in case we finally and truly get what we really deserve.

"Winter will come any day. Back in the scrub on a wet afternoon. Down in the mud, dreaming of flowers in June. End of the Season." Are autumn leaves like winter snowflakes, no two alike? We can compare notes on this real soon.
-bill kenny