We currently have dead leaves on our dining room table. My wife Donna picked some of them from the trees in our back yard and others off the ground and scattered them on the new tablecloth that she purchased expressly for autumn. This is her idea of a seasonally inspired tableau.
“Tableau” is a word that, despite my vast vocabulary, I probably would not know if I were still a bachelor. Now, not only do I know what it means, but I also own one. Indeed, over the course of our 30-year marriage I have endured some 120 different seasonal tableaus. Evidently, simply changing tablecloths quarterly is not enough to sate my wife’s desire to make our home, well, more homey. Donna feels the need to add to the autumnal decorating scheme and, in this case, that meant putting lawn debris on a surface that we sometimes use for eating.
I should tell you here that our dog, Rocky, when coming in the back door from the yard, sometimes tracks dead leaves in under paw. A few are currently strewn around the kitchen floor. Every time Donna asks me to get out the broom and dustpan and clean up the kitchen floor I demur, telling her it would spoil my tableau.
The divorce proceedings begin next week.
Of all the seasons, Donna revels in autumn the most. Arguing about favorite seasons has been a casus belli in our household for decades. Because I voice contempt for the fall and winter, Donna claims that I am a morose depressive. I respond that she is the one, in fact, who celebrates the only time of the year when everything is dying. Oh, I know autumn is colorful, but so is a box of Crayola crayons. Fall just augurs winter and winter means I am going to be miserably cold and uncomfortable for weeks to come. I much prefer springtime with its promise of warmer days ahead than the shortened, gray, gloomy, wet and bone-chilling days of the next few months.
Add to my dislike of the prevailing winds my disdain for the commercialized pomp and pageantry of the holiday season that is just over the horizon and I am one ornery cuss to live with this time of year. I would much rather wake up on Christmas morning in the cabin of a cruise ship plying the waters of the Caribbean than surrounded by the rent refuse of hastily opened boxes containing clothing needed to survive in the frigid air outside. A towel, some swim trunks and a Cuba Libre is all I want for Christmas.
Maybe it is my southern Italian blood juxtaposed to the English, Irish, Scottish, Flemish, German mix running through Donna’s veins (what a mutt I married, eh?), but I believe there is no comparison when it comes to our seasonal tastes.
In the spring and summer the worst you have to endure is some excess heat and humidity — a mere inconvenience compared to the dangers of the colder months (though this summer was admittedly excessive). In the winter you not only have to cont/files/storyimages/with the weather and its ensuing hazards: frostbite, hypothermia, and holiday-theme sweaters; they actually market this time of year as “cold and flu season.” (How festive!) Aside from braving the elements, you have to ward off dangers that attack you at the microbial level. Having bundled up to protect yourself from cold weather itself, you have to suffer inoculations to (maybe) protect yourself from the debilitating effects of sickness.
In the summer the only precautions to consider are whether you may have to add an extra dab of roll-on deodorant during your morning hygiene routine.
To me it is a no-brainer. Risking life-and-limb (they do still amputate to save frostbite victims, don’t they?) in comparison to the risk of being slightly offensive to colleagues and friends when in close quarters makes this decision a snap. I even rebel when the powers that be add February 29th to the calendar. Oh, I know adding a day must be done quadrennially to keep the Gregorian calendar in step with the solar year, but I advocate adding Leap Year’s extra day to August instead. February, coming at the /files/storyimages/of a miserably dull, gray winter, is long enough as it is. By then the winter seems interminable and adding a day to it is nothing short of cruel. Let’s have an August 32nd instead.
