Return Again

I carried my anguish across the Mississippi, through the Ohio Valley, and north to western Massachusetts to see my people a year after I had moved away. It was cloudy and rainy the first few days. But even in the gray, the red leaves of burning bush popped like fireworks. If you haven’t spent much time in New England in autumn, you may not be familiar with the Macy’s parade of it or the seasonal patter. It’s a good year. It’s a bad year. The nights weren’t cold enough. There’s been too much rain or insufficient rain. All this is necessary. As if the display of the trees must be accompanied by a drone bass of doubt and second guessing because that’s what humans do. They hedge their bets. It’s what people do in the Berkshires every October and I was part of the chorus for fifty years. This year, the color was not just beautiful but palliative. The foliage seemed to know we needed extra help. People are in shock, grieving the lives lost in Israel and the ongoing violence in Gaza. The hideous reality slapped on top of the unforgiving politics. Nature, meanwhile, is so generous. Even in the face of all the abuse she takes, she wants us to remember that the spectacular beauty of the fall color is a shared experience as well. I met my old friends inside a carmine whirlpool of blood and sugar maple.

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

There was a startling quality to these visits with good people I had not seen for a year. For the most part, they were short. A few hours here, a few hours there. The love was concentrated like a sauce that had been reduced by simmering slowly until the flavor reached its maximum intensity, not diluted with gossip or chatter about the latest tv shows. Most of my friends are older so they know a heart connection when they see one and they hold it close. They’re aware that this level of presence is rare and fleeting. An unspoken subtext hangs over our visits like my dear old companion, the cloud of unknowing. What if we don’t see each other again? What if this is our last embrace? Causes and conditions will change as they have since I last saw my friends. One person has moved into a senior living community. A couple in their seventies is expecting their first grandchild. Another is anticipating the wedding of their daughter. A friend was visiting the north of Israel when Hamas attacked the kibbutzim in the south. We have lived through Three Mile Island and 9/11 together and now this. 

Still, we know we are the lucky ones. Many of our cohort have already dropped by the wayside like overripe apples. We are still here to eat enormous meals and drink copious amounts of wine together, every bowl of stew, every dish of pasta recalling the hundreds of other dinners we’ve shared. One friend made the same Caesar salad she made for my backyard wedding forty-two years ago. I’m reminded of the Passover seders with all the children turning the house upside down searching for the afikomen. The Thanksgivings when we paused in the revelry, our mouths stuffed with stuffing, to give thanks for the abundance and the Christmas feasts complete with flaming pudding with brandied hard sauce and more different varieties of  cookies than you could remember from one year to the next.  We have been so lucky that now in retrospect the petty jealousies and infelicities have faded into the background. Like autumn, like everything living, they are subject to impermanence. 

I had worried, what else is new, that Frank and I would have to repeat ourselves over and over again during the course of the week. That there would be a series of stock questions we would have to answer as if we were being interviewed by the local news outlets. How’s the weather in Minnesota in the summer, California in the winter? Have you made any new friends? What’s the political climate like?  But we were not cross examined. Our friends looked at us with eyes of love that penetrated our armor and offered hugs that swallowed us whole. And we said goodbye to them again and looked at the reds and golds of the trees one last time and washed our hands and faces in wistfulness. We’ll see you when we see you, they said.

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Many Voices will appear on the last Sunday of each month and will feature contributions from the community of paid subscribers. This month, Many Voices will feature an essay by woman’s empowerment and intimacy coach, ordained inter-spiritual minister, counselor, and educator, Mary Campbell. Beginning in October, all subscribers will be able to read Many Voices posts. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support seventysomething, have access to the archives, and become a contributor to Many Voices. Your ideas are always welcome.

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Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from Amazon or your local bookseller.

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