Just Plain Sad

The park is quiet for a perfect early fall Sunday afternoon.  A young couple is playing frisbee with a retriever, a family is spread out under the trees with the makings of a picnic, and a handful of kids are playing by the swings.  The light is pastel and golden, weaving through the trees in uneven streaks and making shadows on the walkways.  I feel that old familiar sadness that sets in every year about this time - it's free floating with no particular source or reason to be - and it settles around me with a casual, comfortable sense of recognition, greeting me like an old friend.  The part of me that's so susceptible to imagery and nostalgia and depression welcomes it while the practical side wants to chase it off.

It's just light and shadows, I tell myself, there's no mystery or magic here, no premonitions and no reason to feel sad, just one season following another and all that 60's crap.  Yet it happens every autumn and I can't shake it.  It won't be completely dispelled until the cold weather sets in, usually about Halloween and it's an odd feeling, more of a mood than anything else, a sense of ending and goodbye and just plain sad.  I feel as if I should be mourning something but there's nothing to mourn - these pretty fall days are just like any other except more pleasant - it's me that changes.

So I keep walking, trying to let my attention be diverted by the small brown dog, trotting easily and confidently beside me, and the little dachshund, straining at the leash and wonderstruck at everything.  Walking is new to him and the park is a marvelous adventure in sights and sounds and smells.  When a child approaches, he backs away, torn between wanting to make a new friend and his shyness, but the small brown dog is joyful at the prospect of a strange face and bounds happily toward the little girl.  

Mama! Mama! she shouts, Look, it's Butterbean!

Then with the small brown dog doing her frantic happy dance and covering her face with kisses, she sits down on the warm grass and quietly, patiently coaxes the little dachshund to her.  Jesse is unsure and timid with people but this is a little person who clearly means him no harm and after several minutes he approaches her and consents to being lightly petted, then stroked, then he crawls into her lap and kisses her nose gently.  She is delighted.

I feel my mood lifting - dogs and children, how can it not - and the light seems a little less mournful.  When you can't change something, I remind myself, accept it.  Coax it to you and embrace it.  It may be the very thing you need the most.  Or vice versa even.