Fall, another f-word

I started calling the autumn season, fall, after living in America. Something to do with leaves falling rather than empires, a novel idea.  In my youth I remember the seasons in Britain were rarely dependably tied to calendars.  It was either warm and wet or cold and wet, usually the latter.  When going outside, we carried coats over our arms, knowing that just because it was sunny when we left the house in the morning, there could just as easily be an arctic chill by lunchtime.  It was just a matter of wait and see, but be prepared, like a nation of scouts.

As children we learned nursery rhymes about the weather and seasons that were no consolation whatsoever, like this:  "The cold wind will blow and we shall have snow and what will the robin do then, poor thing?  He'll sit in the barn to keep himself warm and hide his head under his wing, poor thing."  The only robins I saw were rouged up cartoons on Christmas cards and we were short on barns around our flat in London, so not much to relate to really. Yet here I am sixty odd years later, stuck with this daft ditty that has not enriched my life one iota.  Perhaps it will leave me in peace now that it's out in the open.

What I do adore about autumn is not unique, everyone else says the same: the blaze of reds and gaudy golds as the trees prepare to hunker down for the winds and storms that have the robins all aflutter;  the nips of chilly air, teasing us through the final blast of Indian summer, reminding us the heat will not be around much longer.  Lovely as all this may appear, for some reason it sends me into a sort of panic.  I wonder if my peasant roots are kicking in to remind me that I'd better bring in the hay and put up some  fruit, none of which I've bothered to actually do, ever,  of course.  Something primal gnaws at me as the season changes for the cooler.   But worse,   I'm also irritated about exactly what to wear and when to switch out the wardrobe from flimsies to cozies.  Same with the bed linens.  It's a dithery situation.  Wearing white after Labor Day and far beyond is fine with me.

It's the time I realize how much I miss having a fireplace, another primal response I'm sure, with the smell of woodsmoke, with its blue haze in late afternoons when the light draws down.  Smoke from fires is now called pollution and prosecution threatens.   While  I've been spared addiction to cigarette smoking, incense and fires still beckon powerfully.  I borrow fireside time with a couple of friends who still use fireplaces in winter and nothing delights me so much as dozing on a sofa at the fireside hearth, with the snap of sparks,  hiss of resin,  and the rattle of disintegrated logs settling into the glowing red firebed.

The flaming of leaves and logs, finishing up the work in the fields - all so romantic, unless one is actually toiling, raking, harvesting, chopping, stacking the cords and sweeping up the hearth.  As I age, the thought of physical toil becomes more unappealing by the hour but toil we must or we weaken further - pardon me as I stifle the whine that's trying to sneak in here.   In truth, the closest I've come to actually toiling in fields was at girl scout summer camp where we pitched tents with old wooden stakes and pegs, wielding wooden mallets, putting up hessian screens around the earthen dugout latrines.  A troop of preteens under the care and command of our Guide Captain, a bucktoothed mustachioed woman of military stride and tone, we accomplished erecting our own basic shelter for a week in the wilderness of a rented field and I felt secure and happy.

Closer to home and far from field latrines, my closet and its contents await further instructions.  The limp and tired out summer togs are screaming, no no, not the cold dark dungeons yet, and the heavy shouldered coats are shaking off their summer hibernation, flapping their sleeves hopefully whenever a wind rattles the door. It's a battle every fall and nobody's the clear winner until Thanksgiving.