But Autumn Offers the Promise of More

These late summer days before the plunge into fall become an interlude infused with hushed expectation. Though heat lingers, smells begin to change, the texture of the air lightens. The Earth, though parched for weeks without rain, is rousing now, as it always does, for a quickened tempo, brisk and lively. For me, this time signals the beginning of a New Year and I always await it with heightened anticipation, with thoughts of cozy dinners with friends, upcoming plays, fall walks on the canal and resolutions to read George Sand, to figure out the art and music of today, and start a new book, brilliant and funny, of course. I'm sure I will do all this. Certainly I will.

Growing up as I did in a small town in Texas, the nutty smell of the cotton gin heralded this pause for me. Other smells rushed in: the mingling odors of pristine white notebook paper, the gum on the back of reinforcements, the unmistakable pungency of a new box of crayons or metal scissors. Smells came from the pages of the shiny Sears and Roebuck catalog, on the leather of loafers and the dark cotton of our dresses. We were lucky if we could wear corduroy by October. Even though the temperature could easily remain in the 90s through most of September, white everything was put away, and dark cottons with sleeves and higher necklines came out.

As I got older, these smells beckoned larger hopes and possibilities, and sometimes new loves. A school course could reveal an answer to some mystery in life that might excite or comfort and console. The new semester could open up a fresh world, and by extension, a new me. Or a new me might just materialize from nothing more than my summer tan and dark cotton dress and from all the characters I'd become during my summer reading. How well I remember the new cleverer, braver, kinder and more tragic me I tried to fashion from Becky Sharp and Nancy Drew and Emma Bovary -- though I'm not sure anyone else recognized this as a new me.

Those last days of summer prepared me for a new order. They still do. They still give me time to envision a more organized, efficient person, who writes faster, procrastinates less, makes fewer plans. Just ahead lies a plethora of ideas for books and articles, along with energy and time to carry them out -- and the belief that I will discover the secret of how to balance time.

Those closing summers of my youth promised pep rallies just ahead, bonfires, dances and football games. As for football, I hadn't a clue about what was happening, being too blind to see far without glasses and too vain to wear them and too uninterested to learn the rules. But I did love to march in the band, my French horn blaring um-duhs, and to yell with the crowd when our side scored.

Not that losing summer didn't make me sad. To this day I miss the fading of honeysuckle's perfume and of the feisty golds and reds and purples of heat-loving flowers; the stilling of the cicada's hum and the cricket's chirp; the withering of evening light and the leisure to watch the moon make its arc across the sky. I still miss the opportunity to bite into a hard, slightly bitter plum. I hate saying goodbye to fresh peach ice cream and corn on the cob. Ice cream, I know, is seasonless, but at this time of year I stop wanting it.

Inevitably, summers disappoint more than they used to. Mine stay scrambled with too many projects, too many plans, and much the same pressures that take up the rest of the year. Almost every fall I come to regret that I didn't steal more hours to read books word by word to capture the beauty of their language. All too seldom do I breathe in contentment and say, "Yes, this is summer."

But I have never lost my delight in the last of summer's days. I am addicted to the idea of new beginnings. Worlds still waiting to be explored. I thumb through fashion magazines in the grocery line and think, "Surely, surely there is a new look for me lurking somewhere in the maze of outrageous garments." Not that I've never tried outrageous before.

None of this means my New Year keeps its promise. The pain of last September will linger with us all for a long, long time to come. And I've had my own terrible beginnings and will have more and more.

Yet I choose to believe in this late summertime yielding up its riches. I've been lucky enough to know they can. On one fine Labor Day 43 years ago I met the man I would marry, and the course of my life changed in ways I never would have imagined. At other times, I've heard from friends lost to me or finished a manuscript. So, I've made my resolutions, have scanned those fashion pages, and will store my white clothes, my white shoes. I anticipate some fabulous development just hovering, I'm sure, around the corner. While knowing the pitfalls, knowing life most often changes in imperceptible increments and not necessarily for the better, I stand giddy in this late summer's pause. I am sure I get a whiff of the cotton gin.