Don’t you love the smell of wood smoke?” the woman said to no one in particular as she hung up her coat. “I love the fall and the smell of the first fires of the season,” she continued.
Another gal who sat in the waiting area returned her volley. “I wouldn’t have a house without a fireplace.”
It certainly looked like the salon’s conversation would be directed toward fireplaces and such, when one of the stylists questioned whether you could truly love inanimate objects or occurrences.
Being the resident know-it-all, I joined the dialog. “It’s a semantic problem. There are all kinds of love, love of country, friends, family, etc., so I guess you can have a strong attachment to things not corporeal.”
“I love my patio,” injected the woman-becoming-a-redhead from the third chair to the right. “I finally got it to look the way I want. It is peaceful and quiet and a place where I can go with a glass of wine and a book to shed the stress at the end of the day.” Others in the room spoke of children’s drawings, carefully saved in archival boxes, a set of dishes inherited from a much-loved grandmother, an Old Town Canoe that the family has used every summer and a chocolate cake recipe passed down from three generations as objects of affection.
It was clear that each of the women in that salon had developed strong emotional ties to inanimate objects, objects that had meaning beyond their form and function. The gals listed times, events and feelings that generated emotional attachment. Shopping late in the evening, sunsets on the lake, family gatherings, snowmobiling, vacations in Maine, garage sales and Friday afternoons were added to the conversation.
There is something about beginnings that has always interested me, captured my attention. I have always loved mornings. I love having my first cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. I loved picking up bread at Pastabilities in Armory Square on Thursday mornings, parking on an uncrowded street, walking among delivery men and such to gather the leftovers for use at the soup kitchen that day.
Autumn used to be my favorite time of the year. If summer were excess, fall was somehow cleansing, more austere. Summer had its uses, but I looked forward to the freshness of fall and how it stepped off into a newness that summer never offered. The new school year began with expectations of adventures in new subjects as a student, and new students and their challenges as a teacher. I can clearly remember the crunch of leaves underfoot, the bite of the season in the seemingly clearer air as I walked across campus as a college student. I looked forward to each new school year. It was exhilarating.
But I have changed.
Now, spring has become my favorite time of the year. No longer linked by education, children or profession to the turning of the calendar, the emergence of new life fulfills my preference for innovation now.
After the seemingly unending cold and dark of winter, spring holds eternal promises of life and bounty. There is the mystery of growth as trees come into bud and seeds smaller than a pin’s head explode in life, assuring a bountiful harvest in only a few months. There is something so sublime and yet so astounding about the promise of a seed that it takes my breath away contemplating the genius of sunlight, water, soil nutrients and the encoding of that seed, any seed. Perhaps it is the passing of the years that has changed my preferences.
Now, fall is not the cleansing of the summer’s abundances, but rather the precursor to winter and the reminder of the inevitability of life’s cycles.
So, I have chosen to cozy up to spring and make it my favorite, adding it to my love affair with mornings, the scent of tomatoes fresh off the vine, books that teach me something, music that makes me want to cry at its beauty, the wonder of grandchildren and the art of sitting quietly with a friend, just being.
But I didn’t share this at the salon. I listened to the others, proffering a line or two here and there.
And, what did we share? What did we have in common? Child related memories, leaving tired and cranky grandchildren with their parents … we were being real … time alone and time with friends, family … cherishing special memories and, right up there on top of the list, getting our hair done, or as one gal said, “Walking into the salon and knowing that I will look and feel better when I leave.” What is not to love about that?
