Autumn

Pippin has been surprised by cold days and blowing leaves. The time change has made him wonder why the afternoons are so short now. We close the windows that he thought would be always open and invite him to sit in our warm laps, but he likes to sprawl, and resorts to doing it under the quilts and blankets we keep getting out.

Tristan, our big 15-pound white cat (part flamepoint Siamese) has started wrestling with Pippin, who I guess weighs 8 or 9 pounds now. He also appears to enjoy the occasional bit of company on his backyard hunting expeditions.

Sabrina, our old gray cat (part Sealpoint Siamese) still wants very little to do with Pippin. She will tolerate him, but she will not play. She lies on the front porch in the waning afternoon sun and thinks her own thoughts.

We’ve had a few warm days this week, enough to make me miss the long afternoons before the time change. As Ron and I always say this time of year, quoting from a Reynolds Price play, “it gets dark early now.”

This is the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing Eleanor. Real life doesn’t have a September Parent’s Weekend or a week of October Break. I don’t want to look forward into the bleakness of November, but I am looking forward to having her home for a few days at Thanksgiving.

Here is a poem that captures what it feels like to be living in the first week of November in central Ohio this year, “Autumn” by Joan Mitchell:

The rusty leaves crunch and crackle,
Blue haze hangs from the dimmed sky,
The fields are matted with sun-tanned stalks —
Wind rushes by.

The last red berries hang from the thorn-tree,
The last red leaves fall to the ground.
Bleakness, through the trees and bushes,
Comes without sound.

With the early dark comes an increasing absence of color. The red leaves look dark in piles. Increasingly, there is only dark and light, the black of shadows and the white of the sky before it deepens to gray and then black. We close the curtains and turn on the lights, so that everything inside turns to sepia.