Anxiety in Autumn

There are two ways to approach fall. One way is with gratitude, a subject I have been reading a little bit about. Grateful people, apparently, are healthier and better. Whereas ungrateful people are sick, and probably poor as well. If you can, so I’m reading, you should try to be grateful, not only for your health, but because your Christianity, if you have any, demands it. It is very hard to argue with this line of thought. There are bible verses and theology and data points to back it up.

I imagine the grateful way to go through the autumn months would be to examine each tree, each leaf, effulgent in its death throes, and thrill in approbrious (I just made that up. You thought I was going to say opprobrious, but what I needed to do was fit approbation in, but it wouldn’t go, so I just shoved it in anyway) thanks to the Maker of us all. You stop in delight and praise God for the wonders of his grace. How nice that it’s so beautiful, you say to yourself, meandering along on your contended and grateful way.

I think this would be the better choice, obviously. The lilting cyclical mercy of the change of the seasons makes life bearable. I need the familiar sense of anticipation, the known change, the things being different but in an expected way, to get through each calendar year. When the apocalypse finally dawns, it won’t be nice at all because it will ruin everything I wait for with so much patient expectation–things happening exactly as they did last year.

Which brings us, of course, to the second way to experience the changing of the seasons–The Anxious Way. That’s how I hunt down my fall foliage, anxiously examining each tree and leaf, sloping hill and falling valley. I like to transfer all the stress of school kicking off, the ramping up of daily life, the rush of getting ready for the church to begin the long slog from All Saints to Pentecost, with a hefty dose of fear that it won’t be as beautiful as I’m sure I need it to be.

The trees have to be pitch perfect, each leaf justifying its meager existence in burnished flame, or I won’t be able to cope. That’s how it works.

If you go around with your pumpkin latte and your contentment and delight, well, that’s your business. For me, my brow is furrowed. I’m developing an ulcer. I will snap at you if you interrupt my examining pursuit of light flickering off leaf. Let me dwell in this twilight hour of anxiety and fear. Winter is just around the corner and if just one tree fails me, so help me, the apocalypse will be the only salve to my wounded and disappointed spirit.

Pip pip.