Hi, Me

It's finally Fall, not that I particularly care for Fall since Fall is a premonition of winter, of freezing cold, so cold that clouds of vaporized breath freezes and crumbles to the frozen ground. So cold that fingers and ears blacken with frost-bite, like my fingers and ears did walking home after school...like my father's did working construction, his finger tips split open and raw, bleeding and bandaged. He used to rub Corn Huskers lotion on them every night, then he would wrap them up with old socks, always out of our sight. We should never see our fathers tears.

Fall is festive; a time of ancient celebration. Today fall is a pain in the ass. Yesterday fall was when crops were harvested and stored, blessings counted along with yields; it would be a year before fresh food would be available. Fall is a paradox. Life sustaining food is gathered from dead plants. Seeds from trees mature and fall to the ground, then covered and protected with dead leaves. Things die in the fall, giving way to life. Should I celebrate the coming life or mourn over the death? Ancient people celebrated, they are dead too. Yet I am here, alive. A vicious and perpetual circle...life to death, back again to life only to die once again.

It was fall when I caught my first fish. A dead leaf meandered lifelessly on the water, carried by the slow current of the creek. The walk wasn't too bad, only about half a mile in back of the old farm house I grew up in. I was four and had a pole, a willow stick probably, with a piece of string and a hook tied to it. I was the oldest, my sister was three and wasn't interested in wiggling worms or slimy fish yet. My brother was two and my younger brother was still doing whatever it is that babies do, so it was just me and my Dad. He told me to watch that dead leaf and to toss the line in just ahead of it; a fish will get curious and nibble at it. I'm not sure if it was true, nevertheless, I did. A small Sunfish nuzzled the leaf and just downstream, I lowered a wiggling worm into the water with my line. That little fish must have figured the flailing worm was better food than the dead leaf. He was too small to mouth the hook, so I hoisted my catch out of the water while he dangled from the worm, unwilling to let go of his catch. After I wrestled with him for a minute, Dad told me to toss him back in since he was a kid like me and deserved a chance to grow up.

I remember well  that place that we called "Back West". The winding creek lined with towering trees and groves of pines, the green fields of tomatoes and the golden fields of wheat, the apple and cherry orchards, are all vivid images from a childhood time of exploration, of uncomplicated life on a farm, of meals cooked and eaten together with family, and of a time and place unique only to me. I visit there often, especially lately since my Dad passed away in March. I wonder why from his death, I have become more alive with memories of the past...perhaps because my own death gets closer to reality every day. Perhaps because I am clawing against the current, grinding my fingers raw on the rocks trying to hang on, fighting against the inevitable. Or perhaps I am not fighting the current, but rather just slowing it down in a world of time compression, of instant information and instant deletion. Maybe if I can solidify the fluidity of my memories by morphing them into some semblance of coherent sentences, not only can I slow the erosion of time past, but maybe I can place meaning on those memories, meaning with relationships of today. Then maybe I can identify me. Maybe I can figure out why I am me...maybe I can look at me in the mirror and say, "Hey, I know you. Hi, I am me. Glad to meet you."