I Used To Think That Autumn Only Meant Death

The air is finally starting to get cold. Though, it’s still only in the early mornings, as I walk the dog, that I feel the familiar embrace of a chilled breeze.

It’s different — Autumn’s cold.

Different from the cool fresh scent after a summer’s rainstorm. Or those frigid January days, just after my birthday as I wait impatiently for Spring, now that everything I had been looking forward to is behind me.

Autumn’s cold feels hopeful to me. I never used to think this because, unlike most 30-something women, with their argyle scarves and pumpkin spice whatevers, I have always hated Fall. The look of leaves littering the once green ground depresses me. It only ever reminds me of death.

Spring has always been my jam. The first buds of green on the trees spike my dopamine. The smell of the lawn clippings of a coming summer makes me feel high.

I still don’t particularly like fall — too overrated if you ask me. I do, however, like this cold. I like the way my hands turn slightly numb, not painful, but tingly and stiff, as I walk with Lucy, peering into people’s unsuspecting yards.

I like the chaos of half-cleaned-out gardens. Pumpkin plants that began to bear fruit a little too late, harbouring tiny green spheres — hard and not helpful in the slightest.

People do their best purging this time of year. They know there is a long, dull winter ahead of them, so they must clean out their junk, make room for indoor activities. I rarely clean out my junk. I sit among my hoards of stuff, thinking that maybe, that bag of tiny baby spoons or stack of Canadian road maps will come in handy one day.

They never come in handy. I have GPS.

I am walking the dog, and these thoughts are racing through my brain. I wish that I had a notepad to write it all down — make some sense as to the relationship between Fall’s cold and my tendency towards hoarding.

Then I see it.

Not the analogy. I still don’t know what the hell that means. I see a real tangible thing that makes me stop dead, Lucy rearing back as the leash pulls tight. Christ.

I need to call my dad.

*

When I cherry-pick my earliest memories, the table is always there. It is two feet tall and made out of the trunk of a redwood. It’s not a perfect circle — it’s got gnarled edges that jab me in the legs when I walk past it without care.

Mom was always scared when my brother and I were babies and learning to walk because she said we would fall on the thing — poke our eye out. What a gruesome thought. A toddler poking its eye out from the sharp edge of a rustic redwood coffee table.

I want to say more about this table, but I don’t know what. Did Mom and Dad get the wood for it while on their honeymoon? Or am I mixing that story up with some other time? Maybe they just bought the table from some guy selling tables on the side of the road. Perhaps it was a knockoff they grabbed at Ikea or some similar box store. No, I don’t think that’s right. They aren’t Ikea people.

The rustic redwood coffee table was always in the background, though. It was a fixture of everyday life. Just a thing that was there, going back to some of my first memories.

Asking Dad when he was going to marry Mom, casually, as I played with my dollies — pretending that Barbie was scaling a great mountain face as she traversed the rocky edges of the coffee table.

That time my dad brought home an antique rocking horse strapped tight to the back of his enormous water hauler. He carried it inside and plopped it down beside the redwood slab littered with channel changers and a TV Guide. He told us he had found it on the side of the road, and I remember thinking that I had the coolest dad ever.

One day, after coming home from school and finding that dad was home and not lost in the wilds of rural Alberta, hauling water or rock, depending on what truck was rented out that day, I beelined for him as he lay on the couch watching WWF.

I climbed up on my usual perch, atop the bottoms of his sprawled legs and noticed a weird little box plugged into the wall and sitting by his feet. The box wasn’t attached to him, but it was near. Even back then, when I was seven and reeling with rogue thoughts, my anxious brain began to take over.

With literally nothing aside from this strange little box to go off of, I assumed that this object was a dire clue to my dad’s failing health.

I had no context for this concern. There was no reason why I should think such a thing. But I did. I remember looking at the box, then shifting my eyes to our redwood table and willing myself to ask Dad what the box was. Fear bubbling up in my tiny belly — hardening myself for bad news.

The box was a charger for rechargeable batteries.

*

The table moved with us from one house to another throughout my childhood and teendom. It was always there — reminding me, in the exact words that Dad always had — your family is the most important thing.

He’d say this after a few too many beers while I sat, unhappily across from him, scowling the way teenagers are apt to do when they feel their parents are taking up too much of their precious time. I didn’t realize it then, but that was Dad, trying to connect with me. Offering me half a beer, wanting to chat, although it inevitably always ending in a screaming match — this was his connection attempt, and I had rebuffed it every time.

Now, as I walk with Lucy, fingers cold but feeling pleasant, I spot an open trailer presumably meant for the junkyard. Its contents piled haphazardly, and everything covered with a fine layer of dust and grime.

But there, right there, is a replica of my childhood coffee table. The same jagged edges, the identical miniature valleys in which Barbie used to climb.

A flood of remembrance washes over me, and I think about Dad. How long has it been? Six months since I’ve even talked with him. Six months since I’ve texted him or wondered how he was doing. Six months since I’ve reached out.

We do this, Dad and I. We sort of forget about one another from time to time. Now that I’m an adult and understand how to conduct myself without making (too many) waves, we get along well enough when visiting. But our relationship has never been a solid one.

A few weeks ago, I received word that he would finally get an examination done on his cough. The one so bad it wakes him up at night. All I said was, “good.” unable to muster up any further emotion but knowing now that there was a reason for concern.

There now really is a little box near him, giving me anxiety.

*

I still haven’t reached out. I keep assuming that someone from back home will get in touch once they know something. Understand better what the diagnosis is.

I don’t know whatever happened to the redwood table. Maybe it’s hidden away in Dad’s shop. Or perhaps it disappeared without me ever realizing as the water hauler did — by that time; I was too busy with my own life to care about his.

I care now, though, so I drop him a line and ask how he’s doing. We exchange four very brief messages. Outlining in clipped formal sentences the overview of our respective lives. Then, once again, we go our separate ways.

I don’t know how to do this any differently. I don’t know how to make a better effort. It’s as though I have a blockage in me — some sort of sturdy brick wall that keeps me from emotionally opening up to my father.

I look at the redwood table, covered in dust and wonder if the owner of this piece of furniture once thought of it as a staple in their family. I look at the yellow-orange leaves drifting down from treetop branches — pinched and loosened fingers dropping remnants of past lives.

I’ve never loved fall because it reminds me of death. But as I watch a rainfall of teardrop-shaped leaves make their way through the Autumn-cold air, I realize that with death comes life and all sorts of opportunities for new beginnings.

Instead of leaving our brief message thread the way it is, I pull out my phone, find Dad and try just a little harder to make contact.

First published on Medium.com