The Visit

I wrote this last year...or maybe the year before. I don't remember. Perhaps it is a bit late to be posting it...or perhaps not. I don't know. Enjoy...just a bit of a short story.

She's coming. They've told me so, but I know it anyway. She visits often, and I never quite know what to make of her. She's coming, but it was the first visit that I really remember the most, and so I think I will describe that one. I will describe that one because that was the first time I was really aware of her, the most poignant one. I remember the visit best because I was curious about her, and I was so young. I was nine the first time I remember her, though they told me she had been there many times before.

The year I was nine, she came. The older ones had told me she was coming, and I sat out on our front porch anxiously, and waited. I waited dragging bare dusty feet on the slate cool gray of our painted front porch, and I swung the swing I sat in first one way, and then another, twisting it to change the rhythm, to alleviate my boredom.

"When will she be here?"

"Soon," my mother would say, "Soon she will be here."

So I waited all the afternoon, and sometimes I would go into the house for a snack, and I brought a book out to the porch swing with me. I waited, but she did not come. That night, my mother bundled me into warm soft flannel pajamas after my bath, because she said it would be cold that night.

"Will she be here tomorrow?" I asked.

"Most certainly by tomorrow."

In the morning, my feet hit the cold linoleum bare floor and I ran to the kitchen. I could hear the pop of bacon frying and smell the eggs Mama was scooping on to thick white china plates to set on our oilcloth covered table.

"Is she here?"

Mama nodded, and Pa motioned toward the window with his thumb.

"Got here last night," he said, speaking through a mouthful of biscuit. I never quite understood why it was allowed that he talk through his food, but I had to chew and swallow mine to answer a question. This time I did not care.

I ran to the window, and looked out at a frost covered world glistening in early morning sunlight. It was a magical place, our little yard, the fields beyond the tree sparkling like some fancy cake with an icing even Mama could not make. I could have spent a long time just wondering over that, but I was looking for her. I didn't see a car.

"How did she get here?"

"She got here." Papa answered between bites of biscuit sopping with egg yolk and gravy.

Mama made me dry the dishes while she washed, but first we had to wait til she heated water on the big wood stove in a kettle. I was restless.

"Is she awake?"

"Yes, she'll join you on the porch after we get the kitchen cleaned up."

I watched Mama make the water not quite so hot with another dose of cooler water from the cistern, and I watched her put on her thick yellow rubber gloves. I sighed and took up the dish towel. Not til every last dish was dried and tucked away in the dish safe did Mama tell me I could run put on my sweater and go outside.

I went out calling for her. And she answered. It was just as they told me it would be. Her hair was a rusty auburn and tendrils of it drifted through the trees as she called back to me, her voice almost lost in the breeze. I could see the drifts of curling dried leaves swirling under her feet as she scurried toward me. I could see the russets and scarlets of leaves, green just the day before, swinging perilously on their limbs. As she approached me, her fingers brushed them and made them fall.

"Can I have a hug?" I asked.

"It won't be a warm hug," she answered, smiling.

"I know, but I want to know if it feels like they told me it would."

She smiled, and her cheeks were flushed the same color as the bittersweet that grows on the mountain. She puckered her lips and blew softly. I shivered just a bit, as the wind swirled about my shoulders.

"They were right. It still feels good." And it did, after the hot days of August, the cool soft hug felt good.

That was the first time I was aware of Autumn's visit. Because of that, it was the most poignant visit. But she's coming. She's coming again. Soon.