Autumnal Notes

Autumnal Notes October 22, 2016

For a while now that I’ve looked out my bedroom window it’s been what I imagine Lothlorien would look like. Green with luminous gold behind. But now the wind and rain have had their devastating effect, which I guess in the point. There is still a single green tree, gradually fading to yellow, but the glory has vanished.

We made it over to the Cider Mill, briefly, inbetween lengthy amounts of school work and frustration. There we gathered a pumpkin to carve, lots of little pumpkins, a richly luxurious red mum, and lots of donuts. My mother, for reasons none of  us understand, had a large squash fall onto the top of her foot. She closed her eyes in horrified pain and opened them to find my two boys leering at her in wonder. Kind of creepy, actually. This sort of thing happens to her all the time. She is always hurting her feet and bashing her head. I hope she can walk more comfortably by the time she needs to be climbing on and off the airplane next week. Anyway, other than that, the Cider Mill was vastly preferable to struggling out to a pumpkin farm in the chilly rain. Maybe I can just always do this, and never do that.

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Have really missed going apple or any kind of berry picking this year. Just didn’t get to it. And there weren’t very many apples to be had. It’s not the picking I like though. It’s the driving out in the peak of fall color through narrow tree lined highways that open suddenly into wide glorious vistas. Oh well, maybe next year.

Don’t want to get too schmaltzy. Soon it will be winter and the center of my being will go into cold, hard, dead, hibernation like the trees. Mitigated only by the humor of my children. Wanted to record, mainly for myself, the excellent comedic timing of my oldest son. Twice this week I have been driving and have practically veered off the road in laughter. Upon seeing a large shirtless man pushing a shopping cart down the road, in the usual Binghamton way, Alouicious whispered, emotionless, like the little jerk that he is, “I choose to look away.” “What did you just say,” I shrieked? He sniggered, and said he was sorry. Several days later, after hassling me for twenty minutes to buy a foozball table, he muttered, “but what about self care?” I fear he is growing up to be a bad bad person and it’s all my fault.

On the other hand, Gladys, on the day of turning nine, thanked me for letting her be born. “Thank you for letting me be born,” she said, from the back seat of the car. And I said, “You’re more than welcome.”

Also, there’s her younger sister Marigold, whose life I devastated by giving birth to her younger sister Ermintrude. Marigold, lately, in some kind of strange forgiving gesture, whenever I sit down to the piano comes and sits very close beside me, and pats me heavily on the back. Very heavily, so that I am not able to keep time or read the music. But I soldier on, caught in the devastating moment of a normally emotionally restrained child’s affectionate embrace. For her birthday she gets a guitar and while she tries to play it I will sit next to her and pat her vigorously on the back.

And now back to math. And Latin.

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