There was no dawn this morning, just a gradual fade from black to gray. Gray sky. Gray rain. Gray puddles. Gray car, even. This will give you the idea.
OK, I took a few liberties but none that aren’t true to the lived/felt experience: The camera never quite does justice to the drab pervasiveness of gray. To its . . . grayness. And here’s the thing: It isn’t even an award-winning gray day. A day to live in weather infamy. A day with which to regale the (eventual) great-grandchildren, the grandchildren already being well past being impressed by our stories.
You think *this* is gray? Ha!
Let me tell you about a gray day in ’21!
No, it’s just an average, sodden, wet-foot, boring, rainy gray day. A gray gray day, we might say.
And yet, as averagely gray as it is, I expect the rain and wind will strip most of the fall leaves off the trees, rendering gray indeed most of the vistas in these here parts: vistas I saw just last Monday as a friend kindly squired me around the countryside west of Ottawa.
Their memory splashes warmly across this otherwise nondescript gray day. Their transcendence, however transitory, holds out a hand of hope to those weighed down by true troubles as well as to those merely nibbled to death by unremarkable, run-of-the-mill, average, gray troubles. The fall colours don’t last, but they lift the heart just the same.
We don’t last either, but maybe we can do the same.
You wrote, “We don’t last either, but maybe we can do the same.” I doubt if I will be remembered as a flash of flaming colour. More likely a shade of grey, fading into the background.
Jim T
Jim T – Oh my. I think you are discounting your effect upon your myriad readers as judged by their comments, some of which I read on the occasion of your latest milestone birthday.
I remember writing with sophomoronic irony years ago about the fading of autumn colours as “my last autumn.” Yesterday, as the wind-and-rain stripped leaves made golden the drive and slopes around my sister’s woodland home, the words returned with literal meaning and deserved poignancy. I had a thought similar to yours, that we must make the moments count although the seasons will turn inevitably. Your antiphon is received gratefully. Today, I will see if I can transplant into pots the red, pink, and white begonias from her tiny garden to extended life indoors in a similar gesture.
Laurna – Yes, age brings a slightly more visceral realization of something we “know” in theory long before that. It’s a jolt to get to the “this could be the last time” stage – best not to waste that little spark of electricity. 🙂
Isabel, beautiful colours. I love Fall. So even the Gray Jays were invisible out there today?
Ken – LOL. And many thanks.
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