Autumn Leads

All through my school years, I dreaded summer vacations.Sure, the first weeks felt like total freedom, no schedule constraints, no homework deadlines, no school cafeteria food. But then summer came. And kept coming. I had things to do: mow the grass, which seemed bent on growing faster and faster, giving me insufficient time to recover between mowings. I had swimming lessons which I cut as often as I could because I could not put my head in the water - that stems from my seventh summer when I almost drowned in the swimming pool of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. A lifeguard, using a do-or-die tactic, threw me off the high diving board to get me to swim spontaneously. The next day I had to be rescued from an ocean undertow while paddling in a kiddie inner tube with my dad. At first, I didn’t understand his scream for help.Summer, I remember, as the season of doldrums. At an early age, I discovered that I was a principal lure for mosquitoes. In a group of picnickers, I would be inundated and gormandized by a scourge of winged vampires. No one else was ever touched. Another of summer’s lesser joys.Of course, I acquired allergies, mainly hay fever that made my eyes swell, itch and water, made my nose run and created bouts of sneezing. A dolorous summer bonus.Then, of course, there was always the heat: thick, humid and heavy. And thunderstorms..

"I would be on the watch for the turning of the leaves, their fall to the ground after the first heavy gust of wind. And the sweet scent of earth and all things green signaling their turn to dormancy." 

.I did spend one summer at a camp in Algonquin Park, Ontario. A pristine place where a pink mist spent the early morning hours lounging across the lake. There were adventurous canoe trips, portaging between lakes and sleeping in mosquito-netted hammocks. And there were boys, towel-snapping in the showers, sex-talking endlessly, snoring in unison, masturbating in pairs in not very secluded corners. And amid the tangled verdant woods and winding streams, there was homesickness. And loneliness.Summer!As August slowly peeled away I would begin to feel a familiar longing. For Autumn. For Fall. I would be on the watch for the turning of the leaves, their fall to the ground after the first heavy gust of wind. And the sweet scent of earth and all things green signaling their turn to dormancy. Not a floral smell but a coddling, cozy odor like the scent of mother’s milk. Warming and enticing.Soon I would be back in school. That meant the return to my social realm. It was like being let out of the hospital (or jail), returning to the embrace of peers. Not that I was especially popular, certainly not a leader. Just that I had kids to talk to, relate to, feel recognized by.And I admit that I loved school for the classes, the teachers (no matter how nice or mean, engaging or distant). I also loved the opportunity to learn and felt lucky to be blessed with that elusive talent for acing multiple-question exams and the ability to digest math and science with comparative ease. I was not drawn to competition, did not look for laurels. It was just luck and I always knew that because I was completely ungifted in athletics. I like basketball but could never follow the ball and was always missing moves. I found baseball too slow and lost interest so often that I missed an easy catch in my outfield position. And could not swing my bat and actually hit the ball. I was too slim for football. The swim team was out of reach because I could not really swim, having to keep my head up.Being labeled a scholar put me into an exclusionary category. Only a select sample of girls showed interest in me. The brainy ones and the girls bent with singular ambition on a career in performing arts. But, and here was my sadly outstanding quality all through school: I was very shy.Shy. Shyness. A state of perpetual social inhibition.Autumn always came with the whispered possibility of change. A dedicated fan of comic book heroes — the entire crew from Batman (eschewing Robin) to Superman to Plastic man — autumn came with the promise to myself to become, if not heroic, more assertive, more socially easeful, more companionable.Eventually, as autumn began easing into winter I somehow settled back into my familiar self, skinny, acne prone, factual instead of funny, curly brunette instead of smooth blond, gangly instead of graceful. That familiarity eventually became soothing. In total, it was all me, the smarts and the smudges. I settled down, keeping hope burning like a small, tended winter fire.