A Cool Autumn Day: A Reprieve From Reality

I had a day of autumn on my week off. It came with ribbons of mist under a sky as gray as iron. Morning tingled with the crispness of chilled champagne.

A glowing fireplace warmed our living room for the first time in months, crackling a remembered winter rhythm into the house. Outside, a thermometer registered 60 degrees and crows cawed an autumn song over the Santa Monicas.

Fall is my favorite time of the year, after the intense summer heat and before winter saddens the sky. To have a day of it helped ease the tensions the month has brought.

I took the week off to welcome the brief autumn, that lonely time of transition between seasons. I saw leaves fall to the ground and the stillness of a baby’s sleep embrace the day.

Summer’s heat isn’t over, I know, but the promise of fall weather is a welcome relief, if only for a day.

I was able to slip on the gray and tattered sweater I haven’t worn since last winter and walk through the small garden I’ve planted to the rear of our house. The coolness energized me. I wanted to dig into the earth, to feel the life-affirming richness of the soil. . But first I sat on the ground near the roses, away from the unsettling news of the day, and listened to the crows.

I’m not a gardener. I’m no competition to anyone who is able to turn a stick into a blossom and a vacant lot into a rainbow. But I need an avenue of escape from what’s happening.

We all do. I haven’t slept well since Sept. 11. I awaken at 2 in the morning and lie staring at the shadows on the ceiling, haunted by realities. I go over and over the events of the scary world we’re living in, like a video stuck in replay.

I see the burning towers of New York glowing in holographic images in the darkness of my bedroom. I see the fire of impact. I hear the thunder of collision. I see the towers disappear and embers fly.

Then I see the light-flecks of retaliation played against a murky screen, broadcast live from the fields and mountains of another country. Angry words, threatening words fill my head. I hear the dogs of war howling.

And I wonder night after night, threat after threat, warning after warning, what lies ahead? Toxic water? Poisoned air? Human bombs? What terrible things await us, and how should I respond to protect my family from an enemy that’s a shadow in an era that bristles with danger?

I talk to friends. No one is sleeping well. We all seek some kind of serenity, a peace of mind we knew not long ago. Like children being dragged off to kindergarten, we reach back for the toys of innocence being left behind, wishing that summer would last forever.

Sept. 11 has changed everything. Suddenly, horribly, we’re a people at war, sorting through our emotions in a new world to find small moments of diversion. One friend finds himself overeating, another over-drinking. A third is sure he’s going to exercise himself into a heart attack.

I garden.

I focus on what is before me, a weed to be pulled, a fern to be planted, a planter to be watered. I work hard at digging a hole that will someday be a pond.

As I work, I envision the garden I am building: a stone-lined pathway, an arbor entwined with grape vines, plots of flowers with colors of blinding intensity. I walk through this dream garden with my grandchildren. I hear their laughter linger in the autumn air.

I want to return to Sept. 10 again and rework the pages of the past to conform to the cool tranquillity of my garden. I want the airports safe, the air clean and the water pure. I want to be able to sleep again.

There are few certainties in the days ahead, but I know at least that nature forgives. Whatever we do to each other will be undone by time. I have seen the shattered earth yield wildflowers. I have seen the fire-followers bloom when the war is over.

And so I seek the cool autumn for a day. I touch the rich earth. And I hear only the cawing of crows and the chunk of the pick. I smell the wood-burnt air of a season in transition. And for a moment at least, for the time it takes to focus on the ground before me, it is Sept. 10 again.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.