One Thing Or Another Column: Falling for Autumn
By Mark McNease
What better time to add a few new words of introduction to a column about autumn than the day we turned the heat back on! Those sweltering, sticky days of summer are finally behind us, and the mornings are once again greeted from beneath a blanket or quilt. It’s also that time of year, early October, when one day it was 83 degrees, and the next day 65. That maddening fluctuation seems to be behind us, and I can start insulating the window air conditioners and pulling out the thermal socks. It’s also my favorite month, with witches on their way here right now, and a birthday arriving just before them. Autum has arrived, and I’m still falling for it.
I’LL ADMIT IT, I’M A fall guy. We’ve just endured what I and millions like me believe must have been the hottest, longest, muggiest summer on record. Aren’t they all?
I don’t just dislike summer. I don’t just find it uncomfortable, unsettling and unending. I loathe it. Even knowing it would shorten my life by 25 percent, I would gladly get from birth to death without suffering a single blistering July. The only exception was childhood, when summer was my annual escape from the dullness of compulsory education, sadistic teachers, and the torment of other children.
It’s not the events of summer that get to me. Who doesn’t like long weekends at the beach or visiting friends within driving distance? And there are the barbecues, if you happen to have a grill or you’re friends with someone who does, possibly for that reason only. You’ve got swimming pools, water slides, and near-naked bodies to envy and desire. Summer has everything our overworked, underpaid selves long for and anticipate through the frigid dead of winter. But it also has one thing that makes it the time of year I dread from start to finish: the heat.
I’ve always believed I have a Nordic soul. That could be true in more ways than one. Not only am I noticeably pale, with ancestry I’m sure contains a strand or two of Scandinavian DNA, but I have a cool world view, with a sort of ice cap humor I have to monitor so I don’t say the wrong thing, the insensitive but often funniest thing, or be completely misunderstood. It’s happened many times, beginning when I was a child with a dry sense of humor (they exist) surrounded by too many kids with no sense of humor at all. Those were dangerous times, the only times I liked summer because I got away from them, into the arms of a family that was dysfunctional before it was popular.
Fortunately, most bad things pass, and I awoke this morning to the wonderful sensation of cool air in the room. We were finally able to turn off the air conditioner—a device responsible for frequent headaches and the vertical nature of cities. (Fact: prior to the invention of the air conditioner, Manhattan architecture employed ventilation and sensible design to keep residents from dying of heat exhaustion. Once we were able to install cooling units in windows, it was all uphill from there … and up, and up.)
I don’t sleep well when I’m stuck to the sheets. Heat, especially humid heat, has the effect of making me homicidal, with despair and resignation in equal measure. Each minute I’m encased in hot moisture I believe that I will never feel whole again. It’s hopeless! I’m angry! Why did I live so long?
But not this morning. Today, as I write at my desk beneath open windows and a slight breeze, I know I have a future. I can chase my dreams, pursue my goals, all with a dew point below 50.
A lot of people are fond of saying we’re only as old as we feel. My bones tend to be literal about these things and disagree. But in my case, I’m as young as my body is cool. Where I feel defeated and immobile in the summer months, I feel liberated, energized and unstoppable in the fall. Today. Right now. I’d be happy living somewhere it never got above 75 degrees fahrenheit and humidity was for the less fortunate, where more days were blessed with cloud cover and I could hear rain against the window once or twice a week. I don’t see that happening in my lifetime, so instead I’ll just enjoy my favorite time of year, watch the leaves turn red and gold, and imagine it’s forever.