San Antonio, Texas, has no autumn leaves. There is a city park called Lost Maples some miles out, where people have told me I can crunch through fallen leaves, but one has to drive miles out to do it. My idea of the experience of autumn is that it is simply there as a process of nature, not something I have to drive to witness like a Christmas lights extravaganza.
There is a wonderful song from the 1940s, The Autumn Leaves, originally French. Who knew...
The autumn leaves
Drift by my window
The autumn leaves
Of red and gold.
I see your lips
The summer kisses
The sunburnt hands
I used to hold.
But since I went away
The days grow long
And soon I'll hear
Old winter's song.
But I miss you most of all,
My darling,
When autumn leaves begin to fall.
It is a haunting melody, and even as a child, when I heard it I imagined myself in a New York City apartment with Frank Lloyd Wright-esque corner windows, watching the changing foliage viewed across Central Park.
Raking leaves is a wonderfully exhilarating activity, part of the process of preparing for winter. The part of the cycle that is winter has its place, too. The cold, the snow -- it gives another dimension to the passing of the years.
None of that happens here, making this time of the year, for me at least, entirely bizarre. No transitions. How does one prepare for Thanksgiving with no autumn leaves? How anticipate the Christmas season without a hint of cold or snow?
Until I lived here I had no idea the degree to which my memory is integrally tied into the changing of the seasons. Something magical happened when there were autumn leaves, or when snow was on the ground, or when the snowdrops pushed their blossoms up from under that white blanket, or when the lilacs bloomed or peonies were overrun with ants that would be the catalyst for their flowering.
When did this or that happen in the monotony of this climate. I have no frame of reference. I long for the seasons -- all four of them.
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