Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.Cool autumn nights and thoughts turn inevitably to rust by J. G. Fabiano I always try and put my garden to bed before the shortened autumn days fall too deep into November. This year I beat the darkness by a few minutes by placing my last clump of leaves and grass cuttings in their rightful place just before the sun was about to depart the clear autumn sky. With a few quiet minutes left in the day I leaned on my trusty old rake to enjoy the moment. Looking down the worn shaft of the rake I noticed it was missing a few of its spindly fingers. Originally it had been painted a bright green color but after years of pushing leaves and rocks, the green had been replaced almost completely by rust. My wife bought me a new rake a few years back that still hung proudly on a bent nail in the garage. Retiring my old rake would have made the job of moving dead things off my lawn one hell of a lot easier. The new one had a slick shiny handle that made the wood look like plastic. At least I think it is wood. The blades on this rake were bigger and more flexible because they were made of some bright new plastic that promised never to lose its color. Looking around my yard and home I thought about other parts of my life that had become worn and rusty with time and should have been thrown out years ago but, because they had become such an integral part of my life, I dared not let them go. I had just moved my patio furniture to its winter home under the deck. I can’t remember when I bought the table with its solid green base and thick slab of glass that had been replaced a couple of times because of howling spring winds or my clumsiness. The table never rusted because it was made of aluminum, or some aluminium-based alloy, but the paint had chipped off over time, leaving long streaks of silver, bright and shiny as a spaceship. The chairs that went with the table had been replaced many times because even though the promise of plastic is that it will last forever, nature and man demonstrate that nothing ever does. The blue, white, and black umbrella that fits through a hole in the table is an item that has always impressed me with its ability to survive. It has to be at least two decades old with its carnival-like colors faded into translucent pastel hues. The long rusted metal prongs that open up the umbrella have never failed me, though every summer I think the winter just past will have rusted it tight shut. I am happy to say I am always wrong. Looking at the folded sunshade I thought about the times my wife put my daughter by the table and bent the umbrella to protect her from the sun. I remembered my wife’s mother and father enjoying the glory of our summer weather as this same umbrella protected their skins that had become parched and delicate with time. The stiff and pitted turncrank that opens the umbrella has never been replaced, and neither has the rope that runs from the crank down the shaft of the umbrella. Every year the crank is a bit more difficult to turn and moans its reluctance as the prongs open stiffly. Maybe next spring will be the year I have to put it out on the curb to be taken away. Maybe next year I will be wrong again. I guess the older one gets the more one wants to hold onto the security of their past even if it means holding onto an old rusted rake. Looking up at the window to my office I know that on top of the bookcase is an old statue of Mary, who is said to be the mother of God. Like the colors of my patio umbrella the colors of the statue lost all their brilliance long ago and seem to have been absorbed into the statue itself. The statue is chipped and cracked because, as a boy, I loved baseball and I didn’t care if I was on a big open ball field or in my room because I was always throwing the ball and catching it. I knocked that statue to the floor so many times I have no idea how it remains in one piece. My mother once tried to take the broken statue away but I pleaded with her to let me keep it. As a man approaching the autumn of his life I keep that statue in a place now where I feel it is protected, even though I haven’t thrown a baseball for well over forty years. Around the statue’s neck are two rectangular pictures held by a piece of black string. Plastic covers that have turned brown and stiff with time protect the pictures and I can’t remember what the pictures are anymore but I can’t take them out of their plastic envelopes to see because, if I did, they might crumble like too many other things from my past. Looking around the garden I noticed the day had turned into night as quickly as if someone had flicked a switch to turn out a light. I still stood in the middle of the garden, leaning on my old rake, because November has a tendency to make one contemplate the passage of time and I didn’t want to move and make time pass any faster. As I grow older I find myself thinking more and more about irreplaceable things, and people. People that had become an integral part of your life to the point you assumed they would always be there. However, like the worn-out fingers of my old rake, nothing lasts forever. I looked at my hands cupped around the shaft of the rake and noticed the healthy tan of summer was already fading, no longer disguising the brown spotted skin underneath. I always try and put my garden to bed before the middle days of November. This year was no different and I beat the darkness by placing my last clump of leaves and grass cuttings in their rightful place just before the sun left the autumn sky. It was now time to put my rake away, next to my new rake, hoping that I would be able to get one more year out of it next year. It was time to go inside, to get warm and be with the person I pray I will be with for the rest of my life. We would talk about things we had done during the day and things that needed to be done the next day and then we would have dinner together. Afterwards we would turn on the TV and, no doubt, end up watching something remarkably silly until bedtime. After a while, I would forget how cold each November seemed to get with each passing year. The End
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