Sit by my side, come as close as the air, share in a memory of grace*,
And wander in my words, and dream about the pictures that I play
Of changes.
        -- "Changes" by Phil Ochs
 

Lynn noticed it too -- how the air and the leaves and the light changed suddenly this year. One day it was the end of summer, the air still warm and the vista still a lush deep green, and the next day everything was gold and red and there was a chill in the air and a new clarity in the light. The leaves have been falling like confetti, fluttering in the wind and carpeting the back yard. The sun has dropped so low in the sky and the branch that shields me from it dropped so many leaves that I can't work at the kitchen table after nine in the morning without drawing the curtain. 

So today, for the first time since spring, I moved my writing operation from the kitchen table before lunch. Through my study window I can see that the siding replacement on the house across the street is almost complete. The people there moved in a year after I did, in the spring of 1977. Their siding was "avocado green," as sincerely seventies as the harvest gold kitchen I had. Last week the old stuff came off and a creamy beige siding with deep gray shutters went up. 

These people have been good neighbors. Their daughter, who was eleven when Lynn was born, was our first babysitter. She's in her second year as a staff attorney at a downtown law firm and has been staying with her parents temporarily while the house she's just bought is being renovated. That these "empty nesters" are making a major improvement to their house tells me they're here to stay.

Just beyond their house and sort of down in a dell surrounded by some blazing maple trees I can see my friend Janice's house. What I didn't see there recently was their sukkah, the little hut with branches for a roof that Jews erect for the harvest festival that ends the season of holy days. Last weekend I realized that I hadn't seen anyone's sukkah, and I asked one of Lynn's friends about it. It seems that when all the kids were little everyone made a big deal of this tender and charming celebration. I remember one year when there were a dozen sukkahs in this neighborhood alone and Lynn and I accompanied Janice's daughter on a sukkah hop, a sort of progressive snack trek not unlike Trick or Treat.

Now, I'm told, the kids around Lynn's age are all in high school or college, like us they are involved in sports and other activities, and attention has shifted away from erecting, decorating, and equipping the sukkah. Come to think of it, the years when I planned and created a special Hallowe'en costume for Lynn -- a California raisin when she was four, Minnie Mouse the next year, a gingham blue jumper, ruby slippers, and Toto too the year she became Dorothy of Kansas and Oz -- are well in the past.

I look at my neighbors' new siding this morning and think about how it symbolizes change and security. It's the same old house that has been sending out good family vibes for twenty-five years, only now it's a little different. The people inside are who they are -- people of courage and good will whose basic values will never change. The leaves and the lilght have turned, it's a brand new season, and it's time to move on.

* This word is rendered as "grace" or "gray," depending on which lyric collection you consult. I learned it as "gray" at a time when I didn't actually know what "grace" was. I like what the change (ahem!) to "grace" does to the thought, and have adopted it.