Short stories falling leaves

1st October 1990

The season’s slow change was tangible in the air like icy fingers clawing through the inky blanket of the dead of night and taking up residence before the morning sun could melt their influence.  I love this time of year, the smells of abundance and harvest, the lengthening darkness that promise crackling glowing fires in neglected hearths and the magic of memory of ghostly tales and impossible possibilities.

Not to contradict myself in complex dichotomy but I also always feel a lowering in mood and an irritating burn of quiet loneliness and passage of time at the start of autumn.  As I walk home from work through the town square I’m assaulted by the sounds and sights of remembered potential and unseen futures.  Groups of young children are kicking up clouds of crisp russet leaves at the wayside having made their first forays into ‘big school’.  College kids are expounding on idealistic theories of philosophy and life enthused by the start of a new term and reconnecting with friends.  Changing the world and friend’s forever doesn’t always work to plan.

At their age my head was a kaleidoscope of ideas and hopes; my purpose was sure and sure to be great.  Not that I have a bad life by any means just a more practical and responsible one that seems to have slowed down and become stale. 

I paused at my favourite bookstore, square windows frosting a little with condensation and spewing warm amber light from within.  Jim, the grad-student in the little café there makes the best mochacino’s this side of the Atlantic and always has a kind word and understanding smile.  I always buy take-out, that way I can sit lazily for a while immersed in a good book from the reading section but still have a warm container and liquid to take the chill from my hands and body on the rest of the walk home.

It was that night I met him as I huddled into my muffler and crossed through the park.  The towering trees were balding, an endless flight of foliage breaking free and swooping and twirling to their mates on the ground.  My boots stirred up rustlings and crinklings as I stepped swiftly through the innumerable hues of yellow, orange and red of crisp leaves my coffee cup still clutched in gloved hands.