Today my soon-to-be son-in-law and his best man are at my house pulling the air conditioners out of the windows. I like having the kids stop by; that's not the part that makes me sad. It's the part that happens after they leave. It's the part where I put away the air conditioners for another six months. It's the part where I accept that summer really is over.
After the air conditioners are nestled all snug into hibernation, I go around and lock the downstairs windows as if there will be no more fresh air until the shoveling is done. I know darn well I'll probably be opening these same windows at least a dozen more times this fall. I had them open just today. But it's a ritual. It's like I'm having a wake for summer.
I love autumn. I live in the best place in the world for this time of year.
I liked it even better when I lived in the woods of southern New Hampshire, and I could walk through trails around the property and look up into the changing trees, letting the colorful leaves rain down, making giant piles to jump into. We had to be careful of branches, but we often slid down the side of the small cliff next to the pool, the hill where we dumped cart-loads full of leaves. We had so many trees and leaves that it took us three full weekends every fall and three more again in the spring just to clean the property up. Back then I considered this ritual a royal pain in the ass. My father was a maniac about the clean-up. Miss one pine sprig and we were liable to be berated well into the cold, bleak winter.
I love the snow, too, until February. By the end of January, I'm reasonably sick of it since I'm the only one left at home to shovel. The older I get, the less I like the cold. It goes through me now like it never did before, and when I spend too long outside the coldness stays in my bones for hours, sometimes days, afterward.
But it's only for a short while. That's the joy and the drawback to living in New England. The weather changes so often, so dramatically that it's hard to want to live anywhere else. Just when you can't stand the ice and frigid air and snow any longer, spring comes with damp days and flowers and the end of school. After the spring rains end (hopefully without flooding), summer arrives with beach days and late sunsets. The only saving grace to summer ending, because truly I hate to see it go, is that autumn is so damn beautiful here that it seems one must be insane to want to live anywhere else.
So, my air conditioner friends, I will take good care of you all winter as you did for me all summer. I will remember fondly how you kept all the wedding favors from melting when we had an early October heat blast that drove temperatures back up into the 90's. But it's time. It truly is time.
I miss you already. See you in May.
