AUTUMN LEAVES

AUTUMN LEAVES

         It's a shock to turn on the television and see Ossama bin Laden calmly talking to the camera. This happened Sunday afternoon when after spending the early afternoon writing, I decided to catch up on football. My first thought was that he was issuing a proclamation assuming our highest office. I then assumed he was participating in a McLaughlin Group type program.
Finally I heard Peter Jennings doing a voice-over on top of the translator, a voice-over over a voice-over.

         I had missed the announcement that it was Bombs Away, Kabul. I first learned about it when the Fox network coverage of the football game ran a streamer across the bottom of the screen before telling me that the Bears of Chicago were leading the Falcons of Atlanta.

         I was relieved that neither my dog nor my friend Pamela would have to cover their faces. Pamela was to visit me on Wednesday, arriving late Tuesday afternoon by auto. She did not want to wait until autumn visited New Jersey one hundred miles south to see the plumage in all its glory. Up here people call visitors like Pam 'peepers'; I call her a friend.

         It is hard to rate foliage by year, like fine wines. My first take on 2001 is that it is a year for rich yellows and mellow browns. The reds of the sumac have left already, and the sugar maples are past their prime. We had a hearty crop of pears, but black walnuts are in short supply. Last summer was wet; this one was not, and this year August was our warmest month. Can this be the difference?

         Frost arrived Monday morning, killing the plants on the newly water-sealed deck and giving the trees another push down the road to nudity. Tuesday it was twenty-four degrees outside at seven, but by afternoon the weather has warmed into the low sixties. At five the dog and I begin our drive to the Thruway tollbooth in Catskill to meet Pam. She is bright and could undoubtedly find my house, especially after visiting here twice, but if she is late, locating it in the dark is another matter.

         I peek at the Hudson in the fading light. It's hard to think of the river now without remembering that the hijacked flights probably used it as a directional beacon to New York City. The river doesn't know this and never will. It was born a ribbon and will stay a ribbon all its life.

         Pam arrives a few minutes after six. It is rush hour. We can tell. Three cars are lined up at the tollbooth at the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. We reach my house a few minutes after half-past the hour. Besides both liking to write, we share an age group, although Pam is a borderline boomer and I am a war baby. It seems like our conversation picks up where it left off the last time.

         We have found we share a love of movies, old movies. She has brought two tapes. We watch Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney being silly and then rumble around the kitchen while I put together some homemade leftover pesto with
some from a jar, adding to the mix a chopped fresh tomato and olives. She learns the hiding places for bowls and silverware. I mix the pasta with the pesto. We each serve ourselves at the stove, and then sit down at the table to our meal. We discover a religious difference. I am a twirler and need a spoon for the pasta; she does not.

         Shoptalk about writing exhausts us. We are both amateurs. She likes what I write and tells me she cannot compare to me. I could tell her that my writing is full of artifice, that I am in too much of a hurry to make a joke
or point, while hers is more honest, but she won't listen. Rather than form a mutual admiration society, we try our hand at writing a story together. An enjoyable evening passes until sleep invades.

         The next day, which is today, we make many discoveries. We stop at the roadside vegetable stand where Pam purchases Concord grapes. As she nibbles them at the table, a beggar puts a wet nose near her face. Who would ever expect a sheepdog to like Concord grapes? The dog cannot stop at one grape. She has found her potato chips.

         That was the last of our discoveries. We learn that the proprietor of the stand had never seen a quince, the bush that grows next to my deck. She asks if I can bring her one. While doing the picking, we discover that the glider is a wonderful place to sit in the October sun and watch the leaves turn. We grow smarter every minute.

         We began with a morning walk in a state forest fifteen miles up the hill in Austerlitz. The dog surprises me by walking more than four miles. The two of us find out something more important. The first part is a steep uphill
climb. As we set one foot down in front of the other, a light dawns in Pam's brain. She passes on the wisdom to me, "David, we are getting too old for this."

         She is the second person to tell me this in the last five years. The first was a man who for years insisted on doing his taxes every year on the fifteenth of April, occupying my afternoon entirely. At last in 1997 he arrived on the appointed date and said, "We are getting too old for this" and filed an extension. Would that my fellow walker and I could get an extension, or perhaps a few coolies to carry us to where the ground levels off.

         It's been quite a week already. The new fall season on TV began with a talk show. Autumn and friendship were celebrated. My guest has gone home. Before she left I made motion that we were not too old for all of this. It carried unanimously. As I type the piano in my mind is rippling "Autumn Leaves".