What Comes Next

Last week I wore my suede jacket for the first time this season.

I had wanted one for years.

Suede always seemed like a strange material for a jacket. It stains. It doesn’t like rain. You have to pay attention to the weather before putting it on.

About five years ago, I finally said screw it and bought one at Nordstrom.

Then I hardly wore it.

I kept waiting for the right kind of day.

This fall I decided to stop doing that.

It was about 60 degrees and windy when I took the boys to Montrose Harbor.

The sky was overcast.

Flying taught me to pay close attention to weather. Most pilots I know prefer clear skies and light winds.

I like wind. I like clouds.

I especially like the skies that come with fall.

That afternoon Finn and I kept looking up.

At one point there were asperitas clouds stretched across the sky. Finn had never seen them before.

Later there was another unusual formation neither of us could name.

We stood underneath it for a while.

Then we walked into the bird sanctuary.

The field was still tall from summer.

Some of it had turned completely brown. Some of it was halfway there. A few small patches of flowers were still bright.

We found the funnel spiders.

Their webs were still tucked down between the plants, but the spiders looked like they had given up.

A squirrel sat in a tree eating a walnut.

We stopped and watched it.

At some point Finn looked out at the field.

He remembered the field from our other visits. The first time there had been almost nothing there. Then everything had grown really tall.

“And now it’s all dying,” he said.

Fall has always been my favorite season.

I like the first cool day after summer. Opening the windows. Needing a jacket again.

Mostly I like the sky.

There are days in October when I can spend half the day looking at it.

But somewhere inside all of that is winter.

Which is strange because I didn’t always dislike winter.

When I was in graduate school, I lived in Rogers Park.

One day there was a snowstorm.

I got off the train on my way home from school and almost no one was outside.

I passed a playground.

For some reason, I stopped.

I was wearing jeans and a biker jacket.

I wore it because I thought it looked cool.

I went into the playground and played in the snow.

At some point I ended up sitting in a pile of it.

I had my first cell phone with me.

It was definitely not waterproof.

I called my brother.

I don’t remember what we talked about.

I remember sitting there while the snow kept falling.

That same winter my grandma came to visit.

She took one look at what I was wearing and insisted on buying me a real winter coat.

It was Lands’ End or L.L.Bean or something like that. Fleece-lined. Warm.

The opposite of cool.

I never wore it. (Sorry, Grandma.)

I got older and started working more.

Every winter I got tired.

I wanted to sleep.

Work came slowly.

I would sit down to do something and nothing would happen.

So I would stay there and try harder.

Then I would get pissed at myself for not working.

For a long time, I expected January to feel like June.

When winter comes, I sleep more.

I want to stay home more.

I still put myself in a position to work.

Sometimes something comes.

Sometimes nothing does.

I’m getting better at leaving it alone.

And still, when I think about winter coming, I can feel a little tightening in my solar plexus.