My family lived in Salamanca, New York for two or three years from when I was 3 to 5. I remember the leaves in huge piles and me being buoyant enough to land in them and not hit hard ground, and the musty smell of the leaves and the final grass cutting of the year (with a push reel lawn mower) rising in a plume. Me, itchy, running from pile to pile, the brittle, snappy October air burning cold in my lungs.
Our house was on Front Avenue, across from the Alleghany River. Front was paved in red brick, uneven and old. The river ran brown and fast and I was not allowed over there or even on to the bricks at all.
My brother and I shared a bedroom, bunk beds. One night I drew a mural on the framed wall next to the bottom bunk. Another night I cut my hair off – mostly all of it.
When I think back on those days it feels like I am recalling a book I read and not really my life. Some families stay in the same place for long periods and maybe that the proximity to a place keeps the memory from being only that faded Ektachrome image that I have for much of my childhood. Or maybe that is what memory is for everyone.
The inevitability of the one way path of time is annoying, tiring. I guess it is beyond obvious to say that it wears on me. I need more…, to digest this moment. They are stacking up, the moments, like the endless pile of New Yorkers on my desk. So much good stuff in there and I can’t get to it. I want to understand meanings and connections and nuance, but the relentless metronome clicks on.
I said to Rose today that soon enough we will be thinking in terms of school years again, something I have not done in two decades. I am hoping that adding more markers for the time will help slow it. The coming of autumn and the passing of summer, even the exceptional and slow turn that it was this year, is not enough. It is over before I have jumped in to its pile of leaves and smelled the grass and felt the cold air. It moves over for winter which piles in like a busy shopper loaded with parcels getting on a bus. It is over, already.
i did that yesterday.. slowed down time… and took a walk in the woods behind the library down the street from my house… i brought my camera with me, so i could try to capture the fleeting moments… where the leaves hang precariously, waiting for the wind of time to blow them away. and like a child i sat down in a pile of cold crisp, slightly damp leaves and et myself sink back into my childhood. having children does slow down time… people say it all goes by so fast… and that is true… my chidren are suddenly grown.….but it only feels fast in retrospect… while it is happening, each moment is delicious if you remind yourself to savor it. beautiful post. thank you.
Ah the passing of my favourite season, autumn. Thankfully here in France it’s still warm in the day, cool at night but I’m bracing, like I do every year, for winter. It’s funny how I know it’s coming yet I’m never quite ready…
B