Fall sees me tripping over my words

Oscar Wilde in New York, 1882

Fall or autumn?

‘Tis the season – of mists and mellow fruitfulness, and attempting to call the time of year by its American name.

Unlike the unrelenting stacks of leaves blowing into our driveway – despite my occasional efforts to remove them – I’m not sure ‘fall’ will stick.

Because a season of low light, cool evenings, and chilly air presaging the arrival of winter is an ‘autumnal’ one. Full stop (not ‘period’).

The word itself has a long history, stretching back to the 8^th century. Its origins are in the Old French ‘autompne’, which crossed with the Latin ‘autumnus’ to create the late Middle English ‘autumn’. From there John Keats and his ilk ran with it.

‘Fall’ is fine, but it just doesn’t have the same historical heft. It’s more of a verb – part of ‘autumn’, but hardly the full experience.

And so, the season of spectacular leaf color, and equally spectacular Oregon rainfall, remains ‘autumn’ – in my company at least.

But my annual wrangling with the topic is part of a bigger question. As an immigrant to the U.S., should I drop the old words for the new?

Is it an auto shop or a garage? A line or a queue? Fries or chips? A restroom or a toilet? I could go on.

Should I adapt? Or should I instead adopt some advice. Another Irishman who spent time in America, Oscar Wilde, remarked that, “we have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language”.

Little has changed since Wilde made that comment more than 130 years ago. Some things never change, it seems.

To that end, autumn will always be fall here. Just not to me.

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There’s no rush – spring’s here

In bloom. Pic: Clare Kleinedler

In my mind spring always begins on February 1.

In the Irish tradition, this date is St Bridget’s Day, the day on which the traditional Gaelic festival of Imbolg – the start of spring – is celebrated.

In Ireland the days begin to lengthen, the light increases, the rain is increasingly broken by sunshine.

I don’t think I’ll ever shift from this thinking, despite living in a country that heralded the season, this year, on March 20. (Spring beginning after St Patrick’s Day? That’s just wrong.)

It’s taken even longer for spring to reach the Pacific Northwest this year. Only in the past week have temperatures in Portland crawled up into the high 60s (and temporarily, at that). Only now are the longer stretches of rain-soaked days – five, six, seven at a time – disappearing, to be replaced by sun breaks and heavy showers.

The vernal season is upon us, then. And the brighter, and slightly drier, weather is accompanied by another phenomenon – the eruption of cherry blossoms. Every street in our north-east Portland neighborhood boasts at least a couple of these trees, flowering pink or red or, less commonly, white. Not since a spring trip to Japan a while back – where the cherry blossom is truly cherished – have I seen so many in one city.

The light, delicate petals are some way – in reality and in my mind – from the raw, green rushes we used to make St Bridget’s Crosses when I was a child in Ireland. The petals are prettier, but the rushes last longer.

Which one is the true herald of the season? It hardly matters – spring is here.

And the fog gathering and the light dropping

Dublin, November 2014.
Pic: Cormac Looney

November. Seriously. November.

A month of damp mist, zero mellowness, no fruit. No bright colours of any sort.

All the wind and rain of December without the Christmas food and drink. A month with his hands in his pockets, stiffed on his paycheck, killing time before the place closes.

Without snow a city that just looks cold, mouldy and dirty. The dreary Dublin that emigrants don’t miss and visitors don’t see.

One man said of November in another place: “It only believes in a pile of dead leaves, and a moon that’s the colour of bone.”

Maybe he was talking about here.

And then, walking home at dusk: a clear sky after a week of rain. And silence and the fog gathering and the light dropping above the park, ten minutes from darkness in the clean, cold air, and finally home, to a good coffee or maybe something stronger.

November has its moments, even in November.

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