Fall changes can arrive fully in sync with life

At midafternoon in Midtown Manhattan, light falls across Bryant Park like a shawl — sideways, graceful and askew. The sun's thin rays trail along the ground and get tangled in ivy and sweet potato vines.

The green and gold of October nestle there in Bryant Park against New York City's Public Library, and benches of readers, of old friends, of lovers and children, scatter across the park. Foliage softens the noise from the street.

I came into the city with three tasks in mind.

The first was to leave the stress of my job, to take a break in a wholly different setting, to think about direction.

I also intended to check on both my friend and my son — the first recovering from cancer; the second facing a job relocation. After assuring myself that my friend's creativity had gained the upper hand against her receding illness, I was able to say to my son (and to myself) that the reversal of our roles was as it should be, that he had grown to be the more clever and capable of the two of us, that he was up to any challenge.

There in Bryant Park, with my tasks mentally checked off like marks on a to-do list, I gazed up at a cloudless square of Indian Summer sky, framed with yellow leaves and the glass and chrome of skyscrapers. The moment was tranquil, perfect — suspended there in warmth and light between the last of the summer impatiens and the first of fall flowers. I sat amid a spectrum of sweater-colors, planted in pots all along the walk, and felt a balance.

When I returned to Evansville, where the leaves were drier and browner but beautiful all the same in faintly clouded light, I looked up the definition of Indian Summer, just to reassure myself of exactly where I had been, of where I was going.

The definition confirmed it all: Indian Summer, noun, 1. a period of mild, sunny weather occurring in the autumn in the Northern Hemisphere 2. a calm or productive and enjoyable period toward the end of a process, period, or activity.

Is there a moment when we sense a season's change and know it's meant for us?

In this humid evening before the fall rain moves in, when the last insects rasp in fragile whispers, I think the answer must be yes.
