For Autumn

The last Saturday in summer goes something like this:

A few minutes before 7am, Jesse and Hadley leave for Traverse City for a soccer tournament. At 7:30, Harper leaves for swim practice. By 7:35, it is me and Corby and a house full of quiet.

I make coffee. I turn on Coltrane. I light two fall scented candles I’d bought at Meijer the day before because ’tis the season. I give Corby medicine she has to take because she has an infection in her back left paw.

I have to wrap the pills in chicken so she’ll eat them, so, while my coffee is brewing, I walk outside because that’s where Corby is if the sun is out. She is an outside, in the world and of this world dog.

I hold my hand to her mouth and she takes the chicken and the pills. I can feel her nose and her teeth and her tongue and my 1975-2019 self is flabbergasted. How is someone so utterly terrified of dogs and then she’s not? What else am I so certain of that I’m wrong about?

I don’t know, but Corby’s favorite spot in our yard is a patch of trees along our fence and she’ll lie on one of the tree’s beginnings all day. She looks like a mama lion watching over the land.

It’s still warm out, but the wind is different and the crickets sound duller, but not in a bad way. It’s more of a content murmur. “It’s been fun,” they croon, “I’ll be thinking about June and July and August while I rest.”

Their song never stops, at least, it hasn’t yet. I hear them on my walk around the neighborhood when Corby and I take our loop. It’s a little more than 2,000 steps, this loop she and I walk. I’m counting steps now. And calories, too. I don’t think I’m on a diet, but maybe I am and anyway I heard the crickets while Corby and I walked and we stopped to watch a boy play with a toy skeleton outside of his house while his mom placed pumpkins and blocks of hay on her front porch.

I don’t know if I’d say I have rules for these kinds of seasonal changes, but I’ve written “decorate for fall” on my planner for the 22nd of September. Of course, I did purchase and light cinnamon, apple, pumpkin scented candles prior to this date so clearly I’m not calling this a law.

I like procedural progress, though. I don’t want to wear flip-flops after August 31rst. I will, but I don’t want to. Turtlenecks, probably my favorite of all the shirts, cannot be donned until October 1. I like to know what’s going to happen and when, and I also know that’s impossible.

There is no plan for when or how seasons fade and grow into something else. One day you’re sitting on the front porch painting your toenails red for the flip flops you’ll wear later, telling your daughters for the four billionth time, “No, we cannot get a dog because I am afraid of them and also I can barely take care of you two,” and the next thing you know you’re in the backyard feeding chicken out of your hand to the dog you were so sure you were afraid of and the wind is strong and full of summer’s breath, but it is the breath that sees the finish line; it is the gasp that will bring in all the glorious colors of change.