Summer is behind us, and it is a brand new season. I know that because fashionistas have stopped wearing white!
I was only a few weeks old in the US, when school closed for the Labor Day holiday. Even the usage "school" was new to me. Back in the old country, "school" referred only to K-12 and not to college. I was learning a lot about America.
So, school resumed after Labor Day.
A few of us students were chatting. Most of us were international students. Matthew was the big native in that group.
A Taiwanese student, I think her name was Yu-Chun, whose clothes and mannerisms suggested an affluent background, said that she had been to San Francisco for the weekend. Matt jumped in with a comment about her dress. Unlike me, he knew how to talk to people. He had the confidence that generational wealth bestows on the young. At least, that's what I thought about him. And, oh, he had also served a couple of years in the Peace Corps in the Philippines.
Where was I? Yes, Matt's comment. He noted that Yu-Chun was wearing white. She looked confused. I had no clue what he was talking about; of course she was wearing white.
Matt then explained himself. In the world of fashion, there is no wearing of white after Labor Day.
(A postscript about Matt: I find that
he has now become a gin distiller! In the Philippines! In graduate school, he made a documentary project on Manila's slums--a documentary that was funded by Oliver Stone, among others. Talk about a career change!)
And that's how I now know when summer has ended!
Anyway, it is now autumn.
No, it is fall.
Fall or Autumn?
The older of the two words is autumn, which first came into English in the 1300s from the Latin word autumnus.
(Etymologists aren't sure where the Latin word came from.) It had
extensive use right from its first appearance in English writing, and
with good reason: the common name for this intermediary season prior to
the arrival of autumn was harvest, which was potentially confusing, since harvest
can refer to both the time when harvesting crops usually happens
(autumn) as well as the actual harvesting of crops (harvest). The word autumn was, then, a big hit.
Names for the season didn't just end with autumn, however.
Poets continued to be wowed by the changes autumn brought, and in time,
the phrase "the fall of the leaves" came to be associated with the
season. This was shortened in the 1600s to fall.
Back in the old country, when we learnt in
school about autumn and winter seasons, those were merely textbook concepts for me. There was no relevance to the real world in which the four seasons were hot, hotter, hottest, and rainy. Leaves turning yellow and the trees going bare? Not where I lived. The
mango and the
tamarind and everything else looked green all the time.
 |
When visiting the old home in Neyveli, in 2002,
the gardener working for the German consultant who was living there was happy to pose for me under the tamarind tree in the backyard |
Years ago, when living in Southern California, where it is spring and summer most of the year, an acquaintance decided to quit her job and head back to Chicago--the place where she grew up. Her explanation that she missed the four seasons was incomprehensible to me. I now know what she meant. There is something magical, profound, about the seasons changing.
 |
| A summer evening by the Willamette |
Decades later, for one whose formative years were in the hot and nearly-equatorial southern part of India, I cannot imagine living without winter, spring, summer, and fall. The temperature will continue to drop, the misty rains will settle in for the long haul, and the sun will become an occasional visitor. I will yet again wonder where the hummingbirds and crows and turkey vultures and other birds went. It will be a long while before I will see them darting about and making noises. I will miss them.
But then I don't really care about wearing white anyway!
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