Setting the stage for the social season
A barber strummed through my hair recently in that pre-assessment the good ones do before cutting and noted that my hair is now three different shades — yellow, gray and the flat brass of a used trombone. Fond of fall, I apparently change like the maples. Doesn’t that sound like an O. Henry story? The man so attuned to autumn his hair turns with the trees.
Robert Frost wrote famously of the month just passed — O hushed October morning mild — but it’s November rituals that resonate most for me. I consider myself a connoisseur of powdered store-bought dip, tacky seasonal sweaters and cheesy Hallmark specials in which the lonely librarian seduces the bachelor fisherman.
This time of year, my wife must watch me and think, “I could’ve left him. There were so many other men.”
Instead, she feeds my disorder, pulling out big Tupperware vats of autumn decorations, the harvest tributes that can go up for Halloween and stay relevant through the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend.
There is, though, in the pumpkins on the mantel and the leaves around the door, a bigger message for her too-busy kids: “You are always welcome here. You will always have a home.”
That’s the not-so-subliminal notice she’s giving our older children, who bounce in and out, even after they’ve set up places of their own. I recommended to Posh last year that we install a drive-thru window just to make it more convenient.
At the drive-thru, the kids could order coffee or make cash withdrawals. It would save them having to get out of the car each time and spare me the annoying little tap dance the dog does each time one of them comes crashing through the front door, a jangle of shopping bags and car keys.
It would also save them from having to acknowledge that their old lady took an entire day to decorate the place, in hopes of clinging to a piece of their early childhoods.
“Looks good, Mom,” they gush.
This time of year, Posh seems committed to rituals that our adult children may not care about. Or they care, they just don’t always participate. Among parents, it’s a common lament. Are the decorations for the kids or for us?
“My kids lost interest years ago in the decorating part, which is slightly annoying,” notes a colleague with two twentysomething children. “And yet if I didn’t put up a tree I think they’d flip when they come home for a brief visit and a sack full of presents.”
So who’s it all for?
For Posh, I think the season decorations are a protective cover, like the fleece blanket she pulls to her chin when watching scary detective shows. More than ever, the world seems freaked out and broken: bombings, beheadings, global epidemics. So if she baits and balms her children with the promise of the fall and winter seasons, so be it. This time of year, she can be as nesty as a robin.
O hushed November morning mild.
Each day, our calendar fills with the occasions of the coming months.
It almost appears like we have a social life, something I’ve always dreaded. Popular people never seem happier, only busier, re-topping the tank all the time, glaring at their watches, blowing through lights.
Yet even I have to admit that when I’m surrounded by people, I seem better balanced and more content. In hearing their problems, I diminish my own or realize most of our problems are pretty interchangeable. Even the lamest of get-togethers can provide a bit of a boost.
A look around our holiday house confirms to me that women seem more eagerly social. A guy can be completely content with sitting at the end of a bar alone, the flickering TV dancing off his drink, everybody leaving him to himself for once — the boss, the kids, the solicitor on the phone. At times I prefer the couch to any stadium suite.
Such solitude is fine, even necessary. But that is for other seasons — not now. Now is for tailgate parties and rowdy saloons full of folks in college sweatshirts. Now is for getting out there, bumping shoulders, hearty handshakes, full-on hugs.
Now is for the simplest joy of hanging out together.
Just look at our festive front door. Now our most-social season really begins — bloated, frantic and utterly ridiculous. And further proof we need each other the way we need calcium or carrots.
We need each other now.
twitter: @erskinetimes
