More on the Change of Seasons

Among the reasons it would be good if my daughter were less weather-obsessed than her father: Obtaining one’s sense of reality from external sources is not ideal. Today’s weather had plenty of interesting facets: The high temperature came at 3:30 in the morning; the wind that blew until a cold front passed was out of the south and strong, and it raised 7-foot waves that I enjoyed surfing mid-morning; the moon tonight looks preternaturally bright in the bone-dry air the cold front brought down from Canada; and the temperature difference between the inside of my home and the air outside creates a vacuum in the chimney, making the burn chambers in our woodstove reach a depth of red and orange that bespeaks the coming winter chill.

All of this is to say that I have swum, more or less, in the elements all day, have asked them to tell me again and again who I am and why I’m here – or at the very least how I feel. If the amount of love and comfort my wife and I are able to give our daughter is great enough, perhaps our sweetness won’t look to the thermometer when she’s 40 years old to prove to herself she’s real.

If she does follow weather in the way I have, though, I hope she has as much fun as I do watching the waves come in at the beach and listening to the wind rustling the last few autumn leaves.