Oct. 07, 2004 - 20:51 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Fall

In the big Webster there is more than one definition of fall. Maybe the definition of fall is after all, our descent into winter. Leaves turning colors in preparation for the festivities unknown as yet. Couldn't be just for Halloween, there must be some forgotten event in our dim past that calls for such a panoply.

Besides writing Lady Chatterly's Lover, author D.H. Lawrence came out with an interesting thought. "The autumn always gets me badly, as it breaks into colours. I want to go south, where there is no autumn, where the cold doesn't crouch over one like a snow-leopard waiting to pounce."

I very well remember some of the fun times I had in the fall as a kid. But grinning like a tickled skeleton was the specter of winter, a cold blast to be blown at us by Old Boreas and his clan.

But things are beautiful as fall comes along. The air crisper and more like wine than gas and clearer of course.

A self appointed lobbyist in training for the season of winter am I. Crazier than any loon, but if the old saying has any force, "If you can't lick them, join 'em," has any meaning, then I shall force myself to love every minute of it. I'll just wrap up in warm clothes and do my thing.

Even in cold weather if life gives lemons, why can't I make hot lemonade ? Or con someone else into making snow-angels for kicks ?

And of course, in the snappy fall comes the festive table of Thanksgiving, where family who love each other meet to eat, but love and the desire to be with each other reigns supreme as well.

And the trees become nudists too, silly things, how ugly they are. Yet, come the next season they will fuzz up with leaflets once more. Sensible plants either have run their life span and die or go underground to come once again in all their color and energy to enliven our days.

So I guess there needs to be four of them, or go south where the seasons are all the same, essentially. So, y'all, here is a toast to Fall . . . . . . . .

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