And the Sun Took a Step Back...

There are by my rough count about three dozen trees of various ages and sizes along the perimeter of Chelsea Parade, a lovely small spot of green about a two-minute walk from my house, flanked by Washington Street and Broadway here in Norwich, Connecticut.

Today is the first day of autumn, says the calendar, but all but one of the trees at Chelsea Parade are still wearing green. Are you surprised that the one that's not was the one that caught my eye? 

There has been in recent days just a slight hint of a chill in the air, mixed, in my case, with the certain knowledge and dread that as the days shorten and the shadows lengthen, autumn will arrive more rapidly than it did last year (or the year before) as the year turns to winter.

I am not, as you may know, a fan of winter. Some of our more recent ones very nearly killed me, literally, and so by extension, autumn with its riot of colors across the tree line and clarity in the hours before dawn surrenders to General Winter who covers everything in this part of the hemisphere in ice and snow is not a time of year I welcome, because of what follows.

I'm not a child although I am being childish. I grasp the essentialness and significance of the passing and changing of the seasons. Some mornings I morosely wonder and worry how many more will pass me by before they no longer do. 

I take some solace in the realization that when it happens, you'll never know it. You're here and then you're gone. There is nothing like a brisk morning meditation when you can just see your exhaled breath to get you contemplating your own mortality.

I walk a hallway in our home every morning on my way through the kitchen with photos of our children from when they were small-they will always be our children-and I smile looking at those pictures now because I can vividly remember the circumstances of our lives at the moment the shutter clicked. 

And because the camera froze that moment, time, itself, felt no need to tarry and didn’t. Our children are adults with lives much like, and unlike, ours at their current ages when we were working hard to be their parents.

And the snap in the morning air is echoed by the sound underfoot as we make our way to and through another day, almost unheeding of how quickly the time we so dearly prize is slipping from our grasp. And you hope there’s a second sitting for Hemingway’s Moveable Feast.    
-bill kenny