The Bones of Autumn

Maria arrived in her bright red truck yesterday.  She was a welcome sight.  My garden had grown riotous through the drenching rains of early September and the prolonged radiance of early October.  Nature, giving the dark, hollow shade of COVID a sharp retort.  Remember us, said the sedum, and the billowing milkweed.  Don’t forget us, shouted the last of the crimson geranium.

But like unsupervised children, they’d ranged wild – vines laced into the crabs, something large and unidentifiable stalks the Japanese maple.  You could have hidden three flocks of sparrows in the overgrown privet.

I went off for my routine bone density test – one of those rites of age we try to ignore until it is upon us, like a ritual confession – all those mornings of missed calcium pills, or that second cup of coffee.

When it was (thankfully) over, I dropped by the local farm stand.  I was hungry for something I couldn’t quite name – color, maybe.  Or the rousing tumble of fall gourds — a taste of the bump years of mothering when an afternoon could easily be wiled away looking for the perfect pumpkin, a bale of straw with which to stuff old flannel shirts.  Maybe I was also longing for the season to miraculously light up the waning year – waking to deepest night and watching the days fold their tent by 4 p.m.  I was looking for a lit wick, figuratively, to guide me through November to the fires and twinkly lights of December.

I saw at once that this would not be easy. The plant tables, usually laden, were bare.  Loose straw lay matted and worn under foot.  The few pansies in the sparse greenhouse looked like women trying to fake their age, with too-bright lids and cheeks.  All was subdued, save a bumper bin of peppers.  The grasses had seeded, the colors gone to rust.  There wasn’t a songbird in sight.

Inside, it was clear, a decision had been made not to reorder summer favorites like salsa and popcorn.  The farm was winding down.

I had arrived too late to October’s party.

I filled my basket with hand milled local soap, a bag of narcissus bulbs, late season kale.  As I stood in line to pay for them, I looked at each of them in turn, and it suddenly occurred to me.  Perhaps I’d come at just the right time.  Nostalgia hadn’t been granted me, but I saw that my little collection of purchases weren’t consolation prizes.  Something more valuable was on offer.  I just needed to slow down and look again.

Instead of a bouquet of wildflowers, I had soap scented with those flowers that would last well into winter.  In place of riotous mums, I was carrying home an armful of bulbs that will keep me company well into Advent.  And the kale…well, I hadn’t come looking for it, but it will absolve me of my many missed pills with lots of rich calcium for days.

My bones are thinning.  My joints aren’t as limber.  My sleep is prey to the merest sip of wine.  I’m less confident on a ladder. But my dreams are more vivid than ever, my ability to hold my tongue stronger than a decade ago, my gratitude is in full bloom. The joys of the late season are so much like the items in my basket:  subtle, inward, to be appreciated only by looking closely, a second time.

Patience, sustained attention, perseverance – are these the colors of age?    When I cast my mind to the aged figures I admire, they have all of these traits, and wisdom to boot.  Surely a thing to aspire to, beyond the forever-cherished high color season of summer.

When I arrive home, I see six vast bags of yard waste filled, empty pots set tidily by the garage, stakes pulled and stacked for next year, the Creeping Charlie brought to heel, the hostas and grasses trimmed.  The place has ben put back to order.  It is beautiful — serene, returned to its best self.

What comfort to stand in a garden, when the rightness of its season has been honored.  It has a comeliness achievable no other way.  One sees the harmonies, the lines and “bones” not visible through the blooming months.  Those bones, too, have been thinned, but beneath the soil I know stirs warmth and wisdom, hummus and hope, to kindle a faith in winter.