Time for a change

Sunday, I wanted to sleep.

Nah, I hadn’t been out carousing Saturday night. I’d turned in at a reasonable hour after a quiet evening and a none-too-strenuous day. The previous week had been routine enough, if a bit lethargic, and my overall health would put me in the upper percentiles of folks whose reasonably anticipated life expectancies have shrunk to a half-century or less.

Still, were it not for a variety of social, personal, biological and economic obligations I doubt if I would have raised either eyelid much past half-staff before the Sunday sun reached its zenith, then only long enough to find a comfy spot for a nap, a snooze and to catch a bit of shut-eye before turning in for the evening.

No, I wasn’t sick, just sleepy. It wasn’t a systemic pathogen, just September catching up with me.

It’s pretty much an annual thing, shortly after the sun slips past the equinox something hits an auto-reset on my biological clock, sort of a metabolic downshift my mother insisted was the blood thickening up in preparation for winter just around the corner. The fact that I find no such reference in any of the reputable medical journals I’ve consulted doesn’t make Mother’s diagnosis any the less accurate, nor her remedy any less effective – when experiencing the irresistible urge to nap, just lie down until the urge passes…

Works every time.

But it’s not just me, this is the time of year the world hits the reset switch. A week ago it was high summer – shorts, sandals and a sweat-stained t-shirt, crouching in the shade with a cold beer while the air conditioner’s hum competed with the whining ‘skeeters and the neighbor’s weed whacker. A few days and a passing weather system or two later and I’m reaching for long sleeves and fuzzy slippers in the morning. There’s a chill that comes with the evening air and I’ll pull my lawn chair out of the shade into the sun to take my leisure in the late afternoon.

It was summer a week ago, but it’s not summer any more. Yeah, the grass still needs mowing, but the turf is pockmarked with squirrel divots left when bushy-tail’s winter larder-stocking was interrupted by a neighborhood dog out for a walk or the shadow of an eagle-eyed eagle riding the thermal rising from the blacktopped street. The dry poplar leaves skittering on the pavement will soon enough be joined by the oak and maple, still defying the inevitability of October.

And much as we may want to deny it, inevitable it is. The signs and portents are all around – the world is turning to pumpkin spice as it decks itself out in black and orange. Black paper bats are filling advertisements and store displays while our native little brown bats tuck themselves away in caves and attic nooks for a long winter’s hibernation. The Back-To-School specials are packed away and the manger scenes are on deck, ready for the last trick to be played and the final treat tossed into a waiting goodie bag.

And on our tables crisp apples take over from Colorado peaches. Fresh sweet corn yields to hot corn bread and chili as the season’s last tomatoes, onions and peppers cook down to sauce or salsa, treats to go with sweaters and football now that the beach towels and flip-flops are all packed away.

And therein lies the pleasure, that the joys of summer aren’t so much ending as changing over, becoming something new, yet familiar welcome in its own way. Life without change would be a flat surfaced thing, pale and predictable. Just as we need spring to become summer, summer must give us a harvest of plenty and the long nights for remembering all of the good we have seen and the good things yet to come. If September is waning, can sprin