I woke up this morning missing things. I just laid there in bed - missing.
The air outside was cool but not cold. Still you can tell that Autumn has arrived. It is one of my two favorite seasons, Spring being the other. I was hunkered down under the duvet and thinking of leaves.
Years ago, while I was growing up, we’d spend a few Saturday afternoons raking leaves. I think my parents did most of the raking while I did what I could to scatter the piles. We lived on North 31st Street in Paducah, Kentucky and the front of the yard had a ditch beside the street. Into this ditch went the leaves. Big mounds of dead leaves.
There is something inviting about a big pile of leaves. When you’re a kid, they call to you. They urge you to come stand beside them and fall backgrounds. The particularly big piles demand that you jump into them, scattering them. Once they’ve settled you can easily put them back into a pile. You get down on your knees, lean over and then scoop or push the leaves back together. Then, you jump in again.
Sometimes you jump in and just lay there. There is something special about the sweet decaying aroma of dead leaves.
When the leaves have all been gathered into the ditch and once the parents have you at bay, the leaves would be burned. Controlled burns of course. The small burn would start at one end and slowly work its way down the length of the ditch leaving a blackened charred path. A white smoke would curl above the fire. The smoke also had a distinct smell to it.
Piles of leaves, burning leaves; they are the scents of Autumn. I miss it.
I suppose that missing things is the benefit of living a long life. The longer a person lives the more opportunity there is to miss things. In my generation we’ve experienced the demise of so many things as we move further into the digital age. I guess that is true of all generations; past, present and future.
While our music as become more portable we’ve lost the warmth, along with occasional pop and hiss, that came from listening to vinyl records. We’ve seen music move from LPs to 8-Track tapes, then to cassette tapes followed by CDs and now to digital download. I like that I can have days of music available to me in a small hand-held device, but I also miss holding an album cover. Album covers were art and there was something to be learned in reading the packaging.
Letters. I miss letters. I was never a great letter writer. I wish that I was. But we’ve stopped writing letters. Our communication, like our music, is digital now. Gone are the days of sitting at our tables and carefully crafting a letter to a loved one or a friend. Now we hammer it out on a keyboard. We search for economy of words instead of expressive speech in our communications. What can we do and how can we say it so that what we need to say fits within 140 characters?
Letters were our journals that we shared with one another. They chronicled our days and weeks for family and friends. They were glimpses into our experiences and our feelings about those experiences. They shared our joys and our sorrows. Letters were our family histories, our heritage. They were a record of who we were at a place in time.
I have kept a few shoe boxes with letters in them. Some of these letters were from my father. Others were from my grandmother; a great letter writer. I have a bundle of letters that my son wrote to me during a summer he spent in my hometown with his great-grandmother. There are few from my daughter when she was a young girl. These letters, along with a few cards that I’ve kept, are precious to me. These are my treasures.
These things, leaves and letters, are but a few of the things I miss.
Progress is necessary. I enjoy the benefits of progress and I am not wishing that we return to a time without digital music and communication. Although, I would love to smell burning leaves once again (maybe a drive in the country sometime soon). But do we need to lose some things to progress? Can we not experience music played on a stereo or sense the joy that comes from sending or receiving a letter. I think we can.
Yes, it is much easier to call someone or to send an email. But where is the memory in that? Are we going keep a flash drive loaded with memorable emails and text messages? In 10, 15, 20 years, the way we use these drives will have changed. That is if they are even still around. But, a letter. A letter can still be there to read. The letters from my dad were written prior to 1977.
A few weeks ago I visited my daughter at her apartment across town. I went there to help her put together a bookcase. She doesn’t have many books, but she has nice collection of vinyl albums. We listened to a few albums that afternoon.
Ah, the sound of analog warmth.
Now if I could only find a pile of leaves to jump into and someone to write a letter to sharing that experience.
~ Greg
so good...
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