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This is a piece about the weather.
I confess I waited many weeks for the temperature to drop. Each day when I woke, I’d check my cell phone to see if the weather had at last changed. But day after day, the temperature in Buenos Aires stayed stubbornly high, hot and humid. Last week, long after Fall should have arrived, there was even a heatwave that hung like old worn laundry over the city.
The Gods were taunting us.
And making me behave in strange ways. I am not a weather checker. I refuse to carry an umbrella because they are cumbersome and defeatist. I don’t gripe about bad weather because I don’t believe there is such a thing. To allow the weather to determine your mood, to even pay attention to it (unless you are a farmer, a pilot or a sailor) is for me a sign of moral turpitude.
I wasn’t even hot or uncomfortable really — not even cinched up in my ballet tights. I was just eager for Fall to arrive. I missed it like you miss an old friend who is coming to visit and the missing gets more raw and unmanageable as the date approaches. I just wanted to feel cold drafts sneaking under the French doors, go outside and shudder at the crisp air on my skin and bundle up in clothes that would keep me warm.
Only my old friend was taking an excruciatingly long time to get here.
I like Fall best of all. It is when the earth and everything on it surrenders to our inherent mortality, when death is in the air and the bright gifts of Spring wither. It is the reminder that all good things come to an end, as will we, and that we must cherish everything we love. Fall keeps us honest and doesn’t suffer fools.
But it is also evidence of the pact that guides creation: out of destruction comes rebirth. I like the raw edge of Fall and the way it correlates, combines, reconciles opposites.
But eventually, after all the waiting, my friend arrived.
The change in temperature came together with a storm, as they always do in Buenos Aires. The temperature dropped a full 16 degrees Celsius in the space of a few hours ( 30 degrees for those of you still stuck in Fahrenheit Land).
At first I didn’t notice. I had been inside, frolicking with friends at the milonga, so when we set foot on the street and felt the cold air on our skin, the four of us whooped and squealed. It seems I wasn’t the only one yearning for Fall. We made so much noise that the people drinking beer at tables on the street all turned their heads to see what the commotion was about. We pranced arm-in-arm into the cold, happy to be alive, happy to be living.
This piece — as you know — is not about the weather.
It is about yearning and waiting and consummating and receiving and giving back. It is about blessings and plenitude and the sheer joy of embracing this life as it comes to us.
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