SEASONS

          I was out in the garden this morning picking tomatoes. As I was reaching through cages and wrestling with vines, I suddenly caught the aroma of fall. It’s that time of year that, when I was a child in Milton H. Allen Elementary School in Medford, my friends and I would go to the school ground to see if they had put the swings back up yet, and make promises that “this year I’m really going to be a better student!” I don’t remember how that worked out—sometimes good at least for the first two weeks, then other things got in the way.

          I was an outdoors kid, not so much as an athlete, but as an explorer and tree climber and making up adventures. On rainy days, there was sitting on the front porch, reading comic books or playing up in the attic. If the attic was the place of choice, then another aroma still lingers in my head: English walnuts being dried out in a box on the floor. We had an English walnut tree in our side yard and the walnuts were always ready to eat by Thanksgiving or sooner.

          I’m glad I grew up when I did, but then that’s probably true for most kids in whatever decade they were born. Still, I have to say that I appreciated my childhood for its seeming simplicity—simplicity being my preference over complexity. I can handle some complex issues of the 21^st century, but there are many that make me feel quite lost.

          Now that I’m 76 years (918 months) old, most of my life is behind me. It’s not a depressing thought—just an accounting. Too old to climb trees, to pretend to be Davy Crockett, to buy comic books, to read Hardy Boys mysteries, to play hide-and-seek, and to swing on the swings on the school ground. Any one of those things could make people think that I’ve finally lost it. They might even suggest that I go for therapy, and tell my wife to keep an eye on me to see if any other symptoms of regression emerge.

          Dorothy Parker once said, “I hate writing, but I love having written.” To paraphrase, I hate growing older, but I love having gotten here. Being retired, I have plenty of time to reminisce, to enjoy the present, and to sigh a deep sigh of relief that I didn’t make a total mess of my life. In many ways I could have done better or been better, but basically, I have no regrets that haunt my soul.

          A lot of the credit for that goes to the people I have known in my life—the teachers, the preachers, the friends, the family, my children, even the strangers with their kind words, and most definitely, my wife, who continues to love me in spite of my aging and my sometimes quirky ways of thinking and being, and who makes this one of my favorite times to be alive.

          There have been people who have picked me up when I was down. People who have tolerated my stories that I’ve told over and over. People who taught me to play the guitar. Parents who insisted that I practice and took me every week to my guitar lessons. People who complimented me even when I didn’t deserve it, but I thought they meant it so it made all the difference in how I felt about myself.

          What I’m getting at in this little essay is to encourage you to do what Fred Rogers used to do in his talks: ask you to take a few seconds, ten if you’re counting, and think of the people who have helped you in ways great and small to be who you are and to have the life you have.  Then quietly thank them. I assure you that they will know.