Candy corn and leaf-pile cannonballs: Falling in love with fall, all over again

It was always the grown-ups who loved autumn. It was hard for us kids to work up any affection for the season that buried summer vacation, but the old folks would ramble on, in their old-folks way, about the glories of fall: the light, the colors, brisk air, sweaters, and, inexplicably, squash. The old folks were rapturous, but we had to go back to school. It was many years before I realized that the fact that we had to go back to school was another plus in the autumn column for the adults.

There were a few grumps who saw nothing to like about fall, and plenty to rake, but it would be another 20 years before they would be relieved of their suffering by the gas-powered leaf blower. And then they could ruin autumn for everyone else.

Used to be, though, we had fun with that chore. The neighbor girl and I raked leaves into blueprints of dream houses and gave each other tours, carefully using the door holes, proudly pointing out our favorite rooms. Eventually we razed the development and raked the partitions into gigantic piles for jumping in. Even the timid could manage a cannonball into these buoyant heaps, rewarded by a moment of flight and a soft landing, and we lingered in the good loamy aroma, snug as nestlings. We picked the bits from our sweaters, re-raked, and did it again and again. And did it once more in our teens, in a fit of what passes for nostalgia in the still young. (We discovered gravity had a much stronger opinion about us then.)

Daddy was an Adlai Stevenson man and had the only compost pile on the block, but the neighbor, who liked Ike, could always be counted on to burn his leaves. The smell was heaven. You can’t burn your leaves now, and it’s probably just as well, but if I squeeze my eyes halfway shut and unfocus my brain, I can still pull up the distinctive aroma of leaf smoke.

And snagged along with that recollection come other things: candy corn, and bright turkeys made with construction paper, little rounded scissors, and paste from a jar with a spatula hanging from the lid. The turkeys started as a tracing of one’s hand. It felt really good to have someone trace your hand, sliding the pencil between your fingers; better than you might think. The rounded scissors were not designed for cutting, though you could run with them all you wanted. Still, we got our turkeys cut out, selecting from a stack of colored paper that looked like wealth itself. The paste, which was rumored to be tasty, tended to harbor dried-up bits, which made our turkeys lumpy. 

We weren’t too young for homework. Our assignment was collecting fall leaves. They were a whole new currency to add to the construction paper, with maples having the highest denomination. That week in school we would go through lots of paste, and flick speckles of paint on our leaves using an old toothbrush. A smile from Mommy and a stint on the refrigerator were all the praise we needed.

Now I’m in my own autumn, and it’s fall again, and a swirl of yellow leaves rides a breeze to the ground. Around every tree is its own reflection, orange and red and yellow rings pooling out in ripples. A loamy fragrance calls up my childhood. The senses gather up the scene, and the heart runs right at it and leaps in. It is the very antidote to agitation.

Soon enough, I suspect, this landscape will be spanked to perfection, and disappoint the eye. My town is late to the noble duty of infringing on the citizens’ freedom to own leaf blowers, but a ban is finally being phased in, and in a couple of years we might regain a freedom young people have never known. 

But look! There’s a little colonnade down by the river. Two columns of trees regard each other across a broad walkway and release their leaves. Distant geese hootle high above the fog. Water slaps at the seawall. It may be a triumph of artistic sensibility, or it may be a shortage of tax revenue, but the leaves have been left unmolested. They are an impossible pink: plumes of pink in the crowns of the trees, puddles of pink spreading out beneath, and in between, I swear it, pink air.