October Arrives With a Roar

What a beautiful day it is here. It is the first of October, and somehow October has arrived with absolutely no interest in easing us into it. The thermometer is sitting at 67 degrees, the air has that unmistakable coolness that tells you summer has packed its bags, and by the looks of the trees around here, autumn is already here in full force. There are leaves changing everywhere I look, some trees still stubbornly green, others turning yellow, orange, and that deep rusty red that seems almost too saturated to be real. The fields have taken on that muted autumn color, the woods are beginning to look less like a wall of green and more like an enormous painting in progress, and the morning light has that softer quality that makes even the ordinary things around home look slightly more beautiful than they did a few weeks ago. There is something about the first of October in New England that makes you want to slow down and notice things, although I suppose I did a fairly poor job of slowing down today.

Sadie and I were up at 4:00 this morning for our usual jog, and I have to say, it was fantastic. There is something almost primitive about being outside at that hour when the rest of the world seems to be asleep. The roads are quiet, the air is cool, and out here in the country there is very little to compete with the sound of your own footsteps and your breathing. Every once in a while you hear something moving in the woods, which is always enough to make you wonder whether it is a deer, a raccoon, or something considerably more ambitious that has decided to observe the morning exercise program from the darkness. The stars are still hanging around at that hour, and the horizon has only the faintest suggestion that another day is coming. We finished our run, came back home, and then released the two fur missiles we call our dogs into the yard for their own morning adventure. They have never been particularly interested in the concept of a leisurely morning. To them, 4:30 in the morning is apparently an entirely reasonable time to investigate every square inch of the property as though something critically important might have happened overnight. Watching those two tear around the yard while Sadie and I stood there drinking coffee was probably the most accurate representation of our household one could possibly get.

Sadie eventually got ready and headed into the office, while I had the rare luxury of realizing that I had absolutely nowhere I needed to be. I am off today, which is always a dangerous thing to tell me because I have a rather loose definition of what constitutes “having something to do.” I changed out of my usual morning clothes and into something a little more appropriate for the season, slacks and a long-sleeve button-down shirt. That felt like a fairly significant transition. One day you are wearing summer clothes and wondering whether the air-conditioning is too cold, and suddenly you are standing in front of the closet thinking, “Well, I suppose we are wearing long sleeves now.” It is one of those tiny seasonal rituals that I actually enjoy. The clothes change, the coffee tastes a little better, the mornings become darker, and suddenly the house begins to feel like an autumn house.

When I got home, I wandered around for a while trying to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of the morning. I could have stayed home. I could have found something productive to do. I could have tackled one of the many little projects that accumulate around a property this size with the determination of weeds. Instead, I did what any sensible person would do on the first day of October when the temperature is 67 degrees and the roads are dry: I went looking for the keys to the 1982 Porsche 911SC.

There are cars that you drive because they are convenient, cars you drive because they are comfortable, cars you drive because they are impressive, and then there are cars that seem to have been built specifically to give you an excuse to go somewhere you don’t actually need to go. The old 911 is very much in that last category. It is not particularly interested in whether you have an errand. It doesn’t care whether you are going to the grocery store or merely around the corner. It seems to operate under the assumption that if the engine is running, something interesting ought to be happening.

So I climbed in, turned the key, and woke it up.

There is something wonderfully mechanical about the sound of that air-cooled flat-six coming to life. Modern cars start. The Porsche announces itself. There is a metallic, mechanical quality to the sound, a combination of machinery and personality that has largely disappeared from contemporary automobiles. You can hear things working. You can feel the engine through the car. There is no sense that a computer has politely asked a collection of components to cooperate. It feels more like you have awakened a machine that was already waiting for you.

And naturally, I drove it the way it likes to be driven.

I wasn’t out there trying to set any records or behave like a lunatic. I was simply driving the car with enthusiasm, which is a very different thing. The twisting roads around here are perfect for it. You come into a corner, turn the wheel, feel the chassis settle, roll into the throttle, and the car seems to tighten itself around the road. The steering has that old-school directness that modern cars often simulate but rarely reproduce. There is no great filter between your hands and the front wheels. You know what the car is doing. You know what the road is doing. You become part of the conversation.

Then you straighten out, squeeze the throttle, and that flat-six reminds you that it is not merely decorative.

The engine climbs through the revs with that distinctive Porsche sound, the exhaust note getting sharper and more insistent as the tachometer moves upward. The car gathers speed with an urgency that feels completely different from the sterile acceleration of a modern performance car. A modern sports car can be astonishingly fast, almost absurdly so, but the old Porsche makes the process itself the event. You hear the engine. You feel the weight shift. You feel the suspension working. You hear the tires. You smell the leaves and damp earth coming through the open air around the car. The whole experience is physical.

And that is exactly why I love driving it.

The roads around here were magnificent today. Rural Rhode Island in October has a particular character that is difficult to explain to somebody who has never spent time in the back roads. You get long stretches of pavement disappearing between stone walls and woods, little farms tucked behind fields, old houses that have probably watched generations of people come and go, and the occasional deer standing beside the road with the unmistakable expression of an animal wondering why humans insist on building noisy machines and then driving them through the woods. The landscape is changing almost daily now. A tree that was green on Monday can be half yellow by Thursday. Leaves collect along the shoulders of the roads, and when you pass through a section of woods, some of them lift into the air behind you in little swirling clouds.

It is difficult to imagine a better place to drive an old Porsche.

At some point during the drive, the radio found “Two Princes” by the Spin Doctors, and for a few minutes the entire world seemed to become a late-summer memory. There is something about that song that belongs to a particular kind of sunlight, and today it worked beautifully against the early autumn landscape. The Porsche was moving along the winding road, the trees were beginning to turn, and the song had that loose, energetic quality that made the whole thing feel almost mischievous. It wasn’t quite summer anymore, but it wasn’t really cold-weather autumn either. It was that brief period in between, when the air is cool enough to make you appreciate a long sleeve but warm enough that you don’t yet need a jacket. I passed fields with the first serious accumulation of fallen leaves along their edges, sunlight flickering through the trees, and the old Porsche seemed perfectly matched to the moment. “Two Princes” is not a song I would necessarily describe as sophisticated, but perhaps that is precisely why it worked. The car, the road, the leaves, the music, the whole thing had a wonderful lack of pretension.

Then came “The Warrior” by Scandal, and suddenly the character of the drive changed. That song has a completely different energy, and with the Porsche engine humming away behind me, it seemed almost hilariously appropriate. There is something wonderfully eighties about hearing it while driving a car from 1982. The car itself suddenly felt less like an antique and more like a time machine. Here was this air-cooled 911, built during the same era as the song playing through the speakers, running through the New England countryside while the trees changed color around me. The road twisted through the woods, the engine rose and fell with each corner, and I had one of those little moments where the calendar seemed to disappear. For a few miles, it wasn’t 2026. It was simply an old Porsche, an eighties song, an empty country road, and October. That is one of the great pleasures of old cars. They don’t merely transport you geographically. Every once in a while they transport you temporally.

And then, because apparently the radio had decided to curate the morning for me, “Pink Houses” by John Mellencamp came on.

That one felt almost made for the scenery.

There is something deeply American about driving through rural country with “Pink Houses” playing in the background. I passed old farmhouses, fields, barns, weathered fences, and woods that looked as though they had been standing there long before anybody thought about building a highway through the area. The song has always carried a sense of ordinary American life with it, and out here, surrounded by these little pockets of countryside, that feeling seemed particularly strong. The Porsche was humming along, the leaves were moving across the road, and the sky was beginning to develop that slightly gray quality that October sometimes brings. It wasn’t gloomy yet. If anything, it made the colors of the leaves stand out more. The reds seemed redder, the yellows brighter, and the dark evergreens looked almost black against the changing foliage. The whole scene had that peculiar New England combination of beauty and melancholy that arrives every year whether you are ready for it or not.

Eventually I made my way to the café in town, which has become one of those places where you no longer really need to explain who you are. You simply walk through the door and people know you are there. I have been coming here long enough that it has become part of the rhythm of my life, one of those little places that would probably look entirely unremarkable to a stranger but means considerably more to the people who frequent it. The Porsche is outside, the coffee is inside, and the same collection of characters tends to orbit through the place throughout the day.

Kevin, of course, is here. Kevin is here seven days a week. I have begun to suspect that he may actually live here and simply goes home occasionally to maintain the illusion that he has a house. We always end up having some sort of conversation, and it is never quite predictable where it will go. That is part of the appeal of these places. You can sit down intending to drink a coffee for twenty minutes and find yourself still there an hour later because somebody has wandered in with a story, an opinion, a question, or some completely unnecessary but entertaining piece of information that somehow becomes the topic of conversation.

Mike the Plumber #1 and Mike the Plumber #2 are also here, both apparently engaged in the serious business of determining what they are going to have for dinner. This is one of the great mysteries of adulthood. We spend years becoming educated, developing careers, paying bills, making complicated decisions, and somehow dinner remains one of the most difficult logistical problems known to mankind. The two Mikes are debating their options with the sort of seriousness normally reserved for geopolitical negotiations, and I am listening to the discussion thinking that this is exactly the kind of completely ordinary conversation that makes a place like this enjoyable.

Joe has just arrived as I am writing this, and I am sure others will wander in before the day is over. That is how these places work. People drift through. Someone leaves, someone else arrives, another person stops for coffee, and suddenly a completely ordinary Thursday has developed its own little cast of characters.

Outside, the Porsche is sitting there waiting for me.

I keep looking through the window at it.

There is something particularly satisfying about seeing that car sitting outside a little rural café on the first day of October. It doesn’t look out of place, exactly, but it certainly looks like it has somewhere more interesting to be. The wide stance, the simple shape, the unmistakable silhouette, the fact that it was built more than forty years ago and still looks purposeful rather than old-fashioned. There are very few cars that can do that. Most automobiles from 1982 look like artifacts now. The 911 looks like a car.

And a very impatient one.

I suspect I’ll let it sit there for a while longer before heading home. There is no particular reason to rush. That is one of the nicest things about being off from the hospital. There are days when every minute seems accounted for, when the schedule has been carved into stone and the phone can produce another problem at any moment. Today isn’t one of those days. Today there is coffee, conversation, an old Porsche outside, and an October afternoon slowly developing beyond the windows.

Eventually I’ll head home and probably take the long way.

Sadie and I are going to my brother’s house for dinner tonight, which should be fun. My brother, my sisters-in-law, and the four kids will all be there, so I suspect “quiet family dinner” is not exactly the phrase I would use. It will be lively, noisy, funny, and probably involve somebody talking over somebody else. That is family, after all. There will be food, conversation, the inevitable stories that have already been told several times but somehow remain funny, and the four kids providing the kind of energy that makes adults wonder where they get it.

The only question now is whether the weather is going to cooperate.

As I sit here writing this, the sky has begun to turn a little gray. Not ominous, exactly, but noticeably different from the bright morning we started with. The sunlight has faded behind a thin layer of cloud, and the landscape outside has taken on that soft, subdued October quality that makes everything look slightly older and more peaceful. Maybe it will clear again. Maybe it will rain. Around here, the weather in October is notoriously indifferent to whatever plans we have made.

And perhaps that is fitting.

October is not really a month that asks permission. It simply arrives. The leaves change whether you are watching or not. The mornings become darker. The evenings arrive earlier. Summer quietly disappears, and before you quite realize what has happened, there is a chill in the air and the first hints of winter hiding somewhere on the horizon.

So today, on the first day of October, I got up at four in the morning, ran with my wife, turned two completely unreasonable dogs loose into the darkness, put on long sleeves for the first time in a while, climbed into a forty-four-year-old Porsche, and drove it through the changing countryside with three great songs playing on the radio.

Honestly, I can think of worse ways to spend a Thursday.

For now, I’ll finish my coffee, stay here a little longer, listen to the conversations around me, and watch the gray clouds gather outside. Eventually I’ll head home, get ready for dinner, and trade the café and the Porsche for family and whatever chaos awaits at my brother’s house.

But the Porsche will be sitting in the driveway when I get home, and I already know I’ll look at it as I walk past.

It has been a good morning.

A very good morning.

And October, apparently, has arrived with a roar.

THE UNWELCOME TENANTS

I knew something was wrong with my ear the moment I woke up. There was a faint scratching sound coming from somewhere inside it, followed by what sounded unmistakably like a tiny sneeze. At first I assumed I had slept on the telephone, which was not an especially unreasonable conclusion considering the state of my bedroom. But when I tilted my head to one side, I heard a small, muffled voice say, “Move over.”

There were people living in my ear.

This is not, under ordinary circumstances, considered a medical emergency. Ears are surprisingly accommodating little places, and apparently there is no specific law prohibiting temporary occupancy. The residents had furnished the place rather nicely, too. I could feel one of them walking around, while another appeared to be dragging something heavy across the inside of my ear canal. I was less concerned about their presence than I was about the possibility that they intended to stay.

I cleared my throat and politely asked them to leave.

Nobody answered.

I tried again, somewhat louder, and was rewarded by a series of irritated whispers. Evidently they had become accustomed to the accommodations and were not prepared to surrender them merely because the landlord had finally discovered the arrangement. I considered calling a doctor, but explaining the situation over the telephone seemed unnecessarily complicated. I could already imagine the receptionist asking whether I meant there were people near my ear.

So I resorted to bribery.

I placed a small piece of cheese beside my ear and waited. Almost immediately, there was tremendous activity inside. I heard footsteps, a brief argument, and what sounded like somebody shouting, “There’s cheese!” A few seconds later, the occupants began emerging one at a time, climbing out and dropping onto my pillow. They were very small, badly dressed, and apparently carrying several pieces of furniture with them.

They gathered on the floor, looked up at me with considerable resentment, and then marched toward the hallway. One of them stopped at the door and pointed accusingly at me, as though I had somehow violated their privacy.

I watched them disappear down the stairs and went to make coffee. It occurred to me that I was probably not the first person to wake up with unexpected tenants in an inconvenient part of his anatomy. Somewhere, I thought, there was undoubtedly a tired traveler opening his eyes that morning and wondering why his elbow was furnished.

THE FATHER WHO SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT THIS THROUGH

“Dad, can I ask you something?”

His father looked up from the newspaper and immediately became suspicious. There are certain openings to a conversation that no parent hears without a slight tightening of the stomach, and this was one of them.

“Sure,” he said cautiously.

“Where do babies come from?”

The newspaper lowered by approximately two inches.

“Well,” his father said, “that’s an interesting question.”

The boy waited.

His father considered several possible answers, rejected all of them, and then settled upon the first explanation that entered his mind, which was unfortunate because it involved a delivery truck, a mysterious bakery, and a moonlit orchard inhabited by unusually cheerful fairies.

“Basically,” he began, “when a baby is needed, the nighttime delivery people come through town carrying a large basket. They stop at the little bakery behind the church, where the bakers make babies out of flour, cinnamon, and a special kind of sugar that only grows under the full moon. Then the moon gardeners put the babies in wooden crates, and the delivery people bring one to the house where it belongs.”

The boy appeared impressed.

“Really?”

“Absolutely,” said his father, now committed to the lie.

“And how do they know which house?”

“Well, each baby has a tiny address written on its foot.”

The boy thought about this for a moment.

“What if they get the address wrong?”

“Then,” his father said, “there are some very awkward conversations.”

The boy nodded solemnly and seemed satisfied.

His father began raising the newspaper again when the boy spoke.

“Okay. Then where did the television come from?”

The father froze.

“The television?”

“Yeah.”

He stared at his son for several seconds.

Then he slowly folded the newspaper.

“Same people,” he said. “Different bakery.”

THE WINTER THAT LASTED ELEVEN MINUTES

We had prepared ourselves for a long winter that year, the sort of winter that begins in November and settles over a town with the grim determination of a relative who has come to stay indefinitely. By the end of autumn, the cellar was stacked with firewood, the animals had been brought into the barn, the windows had been sealed, and the pantry was sufficiently stocked to sustain the household through several months of snow, ice, and the general inconvenience that accompanies being unable to see the road. My father had even sharpened the old snow shovel, which was considered excessive at the time but which, as events would demonstrate, was not nearly as excessive as some of the other preparations we had made.

The last week of November was unusually cold, and everyone could feel winter approaching. The sky had taken on that particular grayness that seems to press down upon the fields, and the wind had begun moving through the trees with the low, persistent sound of something large and unpleasant approaching from a considerable distance. Then, one afternoon, the storm arrived. Snow came down so heavily that within minutes the pasture disappeared, the barn roof was nearly obscured, and the old oak trees behind the house were bending under the weight of the wind. We hurried inside, bolted the doors, pulled the curtains, and built up the fire until the stove was glowing. Ma put a pot of broth on the range, and for the first time that season everyone began discussing winter as though it were an actual adversary that had arrived at the front gate and intended to remain until spring.

It was a convincing performance. We sat around the kitchen in our heavy sweaters and wool socks, listening to the wind howl outside and congratulating ourselves on having had the foresight to prepare. My father remarked that we would probably be snowed in until March. My mother said she hoped we had enough coffee. Someone mentioned that the chickens would have to be checked in the morning, assuming the door could still be opened. We had all settled mentally into the long confinement of winter when, approximately eleven minutes after the storm began, the entire thing simply stopped.

There was no gradual improvement, no final gust of wind, and no dignified retreat of the weather toward some distant horizon. One moment we were in the middle of a blizzard and the next there was nothing. The wind disappeared, the clouds parted, and sunlight came through the kitchen window as though somebody had switched on a lamp. We opened the door cautiously and discovered that the snow was already melting. By the time we reached the porch, birds were singing in the trees. A few minutes later, the first flowers began opening in the garden, which was particularly confusing because we had planted none of them.

Within the hour, the temperature had risen to nearly ninety degrees.

There we stood in our wool coats, scarves, sheepskin-lined boots, and thick gloves, looking out over a landscape that had somehow gone directly from December to late June while we were standing in the kitchen. The chickens were wandering around as though nothing unusual had happened. A pair of robins had returned to the apple tree. Somewhere down the road, a man had apparently decided that this was an excellent opportunity to mow his lawn, and the distant sound of his lawnmower seemed almost insulting.

Nobody said much. We simply stood there looking at one another, because there are certain circumstances in which language is not particularly useful. We had spent weeks preparing for winter, had endured eleven minutes of it, and had somehow arrived in summer. The fire was still blazing in the stove. Ma’s broth was still simmering. There were six cords of firewood stacked in the shed and enough canned food in the cellar to sustain us through a siege.

For the next two weeks, we mostly waited.

Nobody trusted the weather anymore. Every morning we looked outside expecting snow. Every evening someone checked the thermometer. We left the storm windows up because taking them down seemed presumptuous, and we continued wearing sweaters in the house despite the fact that everyone was sweating. My father refused to put the snow shovel away. “It’ll be back,” he said, with the grim confidence of a man who had spent three hundred dollars preparing for something that had lasted eleven minutes.

Winter never returned.

Eventually the flowers died, summer arrived properly, and we accepted that the previous season had apparently been nothing more than a meteorological misunderstanding. But every November afterward, when the first cold wind came through the valley, somebody would look toward the woods and ask whether we ought to bring in the animals.

Nobody laughed.

We had learned our lesson.

Weather, like family, is capable of changing its mind without consulting anybody.

THE DAY THE GEESE ARRIVE

I have been preparing for the geese.

Other people may be caught completely unprepared when the geese finally arrive, but I intend to handle the occasion with dignity. I have spent considerable time thinking about what a person ought to say when confronted by a large number of geese under circumstances that have not yet been explained.

I have several possibilities.

“Ah. Geese.”

Or perhaps, “Well, this is unexpected.”

There is also the more enthusiastic approach:

“Welcome, geese. I hope your journey was pleasant.”

I have practiced these statements in the kitchen, in the car, and once while waiting for the pharmacist to find my prescription. The pharmacist seemed uncomfortable, but I believe that was because she had not been informed about the geese.

I have considered other responses.

“Good afternoon, distinguished birds.”

“Please remain calm.”

“I assume you have come to discuss the matter.”

The last one seems particularly useful because it establishes immediately that I am prepared for negotiations.

Of course, nobody knows when the geese will arrive. It could be tomorrow. It could be next Tuesday. They may come in the morning, or they may appear suddenly at dusk and stand silently in the driveway, waiting for someone to acknowledge them.

This is precisely why preparation is necessary.

When the moment comes, I do not intend to panic.

I will take a deep breath.

I will look the lead goose directly in the eye.

And I will say the one thing I have decided upon with absolute certainty:

“Good. You’re here.”

THE DAY I FINALLY LEFT THE CHAIR

It began as an ordinary afternoon, which is how most significant events begin before anybody realizes they are significant. I had been sitting in my favorite chair for some time, staring at the television without actually watching it and wondering whether there was anything in the refrigerator worth getting up for.

There was not.

This was important.

I considered remaining where I was.

Then, for reasons I still cannot fully explain, I thought, “Perhaps I should stand.”

The idea seemed radical.

For years I had treated the chair as a destination rather than a temporary arrangement. I had sat there through entire afternoons, evenings, and at least one birthday. I had developed a system for reaching the remote without changing position. I had become, in a very real sense, part of the furniture.

But that afternoon something changed.

I leaned forward.

My feet touched the floor.

I stood.

For several seconds I remained upright, amazed by the possibilities that had suddenly become available to me. The kitchen was there. The hallway was there. The front door was there. I could go anywhere.

I walked to the refrigerator.

There was still nothing worth eating.

Nevertheless, I felt different.

I had done something difficult, something nobody had specifically asked me to do, and something I had previously regarded as entirely unnecessary.

Perhaps others would follow.

Perhaps future generations would hear about the afternoon when a man simply decided that sitting down was no longer sufficient.

Or perhaps tomorrow I would sit back in the chair and never get up again.

But at least now I knew I could.

THE CELESTIAL METHOD FOR BECOMING EXTREMELY LIGHT

For centuries, people have looked to the stars for guidance. Sailors used them to find their way home, farmers used them to predict the seasons, and increasingly desperate people have begun consulting them about whether they should have dessert.

Professor Horace Bellweather’s Celestial Slimming System combines astronomy, nutrition, and the ancient human desire to fit into trousers that were purchased several years ago.

The principle is simple. Every person is assigned a food according to his or her constellation. Unfortunately, Professor Bellweather’s research indicates that most constellations are associated with foods that are extremely small.

THE FIRST PHASE

Aries: one almond.

Taurus: half a cracker.

Gemini: the smell of toast.

Cancer: one green pea, provided it is cut in half.

Leo: an entire grape, but only on alternate Thursdays.

THE SECOND PHASE

At this point, the stars become more demanding. Participants are permitted to look at food photographs for nutritional encouragement. Under no circumstances should the photographs be touched.

A particularly favorable alignment of Jupiter may permit the dieter to lick a birthday cake.

THE THIRD PHASE

Once the moon enters the correct house, the program becomes considerably more generous.

Participants may consume an entire slice of pie.

This is followed by three days of remorse and a consultation with an astrologer who will explain that the pie was probably Saturn’s fault.

The system has been enormously successful among people who enjoy complicated charts and dislike lunch.

There is, however, one final provision.

If after completing the entire program you have not reached your desired weight, do not blame yourself. The stars may simply have miscalculated.

At that point, Professor Bellweather recommends stepping away from the scale, putting on a comfortable pair of pants, and accepting the revolutionary possibility that the number on the bathroom floor may not actually be the most important fact about your existence.

OH, THE TERRIBLE BEAUTY OF THREE SMALL IDEAS

I

There are mornings, I told her, when the season seems to arrive without making an appointment. A tree will suddenly have leaves. A bird will appear on the telephone wire. Somewhere a lawn mower will begin its annual argument with the neighbors.

History is mostly like that, I said.

Nobody remembers the ordinary Tuesday.

They remember the afternoon the horse escaped, the evening the mayor fell into the fountain, the summer when everyone briefly believed the lake was haunted. Great events seldom announce themselves. They simply happen, and afterward somebody gives them a date.

She looked at me.

“Were you going somewhere with this?”

I admitted that I had not been.

II

There are also evenings when the mind becomes sentimental about things that do not deserve sentimentality.

A closed diner.

An empty parking lot.

The smell of somebody’s fireplace three streets away.

A receipt found in an old coat.

You begin remembering people you haven’t seen in twenty years and places that were never particularly interesting in the first place. You remember a particular sandwich, a particular rainstorm, a particular streetlamp.

Then you realize you have spent forty minutes thinking about a parking meter.

This is how nostalgia works.

It has no standards.

III

For those who feel that ordinary conversation has become insufficiently strange, several possibilities remain.

1. Approach your closest friend with complete seriousness and announce, “I have been studying your handwriting, and I have reached a troubling conclusion.” Refuse to elaborate.
2. Attend a formal dinner carrying a completely ordinary banana. Place it beside your plate before the first course. If anyone asks why, look mildly surprised and say, “You mean nobody else brought one?”
3. Visit an art gallery, stand respectfully before a landscape painting, and after several minutes whisper, “I know what you did,” before walking calmly to the next room.

These activities have no practical purpose.

They will improve nothing.

They will almost certainly confuse somebody.

And perhaps that is enough.

THE PLACE WHERE COMMON SENSE WENT MISSING

There is a peculiar territory between one bad decision and the next, a sort of psychological no-man’s-land where ordinary rules cease to apply and everybody involved begins speaking as though they have been awake for three days.

I found myself there one evening.

“Stop!” she shouted.

“I am stopping,” I replied.

“You are absolutely not stopping!”

This was difficult to determine, since neither of us had established what, precisely, was supposed to be stopping.

She pointed dramatically toward the hallway.

“You cannot simply do this and expect me to remain silent!”

“I wasn’t expecting silence.”

“You should have been!”

At this point a minister appeared in the doorway, which was unfortunate because nobody had invited him and, more importantly, nobody could remember why he had come.

He was carrying a wallet.

“This belongs to Mr. Pembroke,” he announced.

Everyone looked at Mr. Pembroke.

Mr. Pembroke looked at the wallet.

Then he looked at his own empty pocket.

“That explains something,” he said.

The wallet had apparently been discovered beneath a chair in the bedroom, although no one could explain how it had arrived there. This immediately led to a discussion concerning whether its location constituted evidence of anything at all, a question that became considerably more complicated when someone discovered that the wallet had been missing since Tuesday.

The minister sighed.

“I think,” he said, “that we have wandered rather far from the original subject.”

Nobody could remember what the original subject had been.

And that, more or less, was how the evening ended: with an unexplained wallet, an embarrassed gentleman, an increasingly frustrated woman, and a clergyman standing in the hallway wondering why he had ever agreed to come over in the first place.

Somewhere between propriety and confusion, we had crossed the border.

There was no sign.

Late September Golf: Eighteen Holes Before Dark

There are certain September days in New England when summer has finally loosened its grip but autumn has not yet fully taken over, and today was one of them. Fifty-eight degrees, crystal-clear skies, essentially no humidity, and that particular coolness in the air that makes walking onto a golf course feel almost medicinal after spending the better part of the day inside a hospital. I was able to get out of the hospital a little earlier than usual this Wednesday, and, as I have mentioned before, there is a fairly simple rule I have developed for these situations: if the weather is perfect and there is enough daylight left to get eighteen holes in, I am going golfing.

So I drove home, changed, grabbed the clubs, and loaded them into the BMW M8. There is something inherently satisfying about putting a golf bag into a car that has absolutely no business being associated with golf and then pointing it toward the country club. The M8 is not exactly a practical golf vehicle, but it does make the trip to the course considerably more entertaining. I am a member of the club, after all, and there is a certain obligation to extract some value from those dues and fees. At least that is the argument I continue to make to myself.

By the time I reached the course, the temperature had settled into that perfect cool range where you can swing aggressively without feeling overheated, but the air is not yet cold enough to make the hands stiff. The course was beginning to show the first unmistakable signs that summer was over. A few leaves had already found their way onto the fairways, scattered across the turf almost casually. The grass was still in excellent shape, but the landscape had begun its slow transition. It was a reminder that the window for these twilight rounds is narrowing by the day.

I went out with the intention of playing eighteen, and I was not particularly interested in turning the round into a leisurely September stroll. I wanted to play golf. Real golf. Full routine, full commitment, proper club selection, target golf, and an attempt to execute every shot rather than simply knocking the ball around for the sake of being outside.

And, frankly, I played extremely well.

I would put the round in my Excellent: Outstanding, near elite/tour-level with minimal flaws category. That is not something I say casually. There is a considerable difference between having a good score and actually playing excellent golf. You can shoot a respectable number while making questionable decisions, getting away with poor swings, or scrambling your way around the course. Conversely, you can occasionally strike the ball beautifully and still post a mediocre score because of one bad stretch around the greens. Today was much closer to the former ideal: the swing was there, the contact was there, the ball-striking was there, and, perhaps most importantly, the decisions were generally sound.

The biggest difference was my tee game. I was finding the center of the clubface consistently, and that changes the entire geometry of a golf course. When the driver is behaving, the game becomes considerably easier because you are hitting approach shots from the places where the architect intended you to hit them rather than spending the afternoon manufacturing recoveries. I was able to commit to the driver without steering it, and the ball flight had the kind of penetrating trajectory I like this time of year. There was enough launch to carry hazards and enough spin stability that the ball was not ballooning or wandering excessively in the cool air.

The important part was not simply distance. It was position.

I was putting the ball in places that gave me a clean second shot. That sounds obvious, but it is one of those things that separates playing golf from merely hitting golf shots. A tee shot can be technically excellent and still leave you with an awkward angle, an obstructed line, or a poor entry into the green. Today I was generally playing to the correct side of the fairway, setting up the next shot before I ever reached the ball.

My irons were probably the strongest part of the round.

There was a particularly good rhythm to the iron play. The contact was crisp, with the ball coming off the face before the turf, and the divots were generally shallow and moving toward the target. That is one of those little things golfers notice immediately. When the strike is right, the clubhead does not feel as though it is fighting the ground. It feels as though the club is moving through the ball and then taking the turf afterward.

The cooler temperature also made club selection interesting. The ball does not carry quite the same way in fifty-eight-degree air as it does on a hot, humid July afternoon, and I found myself paying closer attention to actual carry numbers rather than relying on summer yardages. That meant a little more club on several approaches, but I never felt as though I was forcing the swing to manufacture distance. I simply trusted the number, selected the appropriate club, and made the swing.

That is really the essence of good approach play.

Pick the target. Pick the number. Pick the club. Commit.

There was very little of the dreaded in-between golf where you are standing over a shot thinking about three different possibilities and eventually making a swing that reflects none of them.

My proximity to the greens was also excellent. I was giving myself legitimate birdie opportunities rather than relying on twenty-five-foot putts to manufacture momentum. Several approaches finished inside a comfortable makeable range, and even when I missed the intended landing spot, I generally left myself with manageable pitches or straightforward uphill chips rather than short-sided nonsense.

And short-sided nonsense is one of the great ways to turn an excellent round into a frustrating one.

The short game was similarly controlled. I was not trying to get cute. Around the greens, I kept the technique simple: select the landing spot, determine the amount of release, and make the stroke that produces that trajectory. A couple of times I had opportunities to attack pins, but the better decision was to play toward the fat portion of the green and accept a ten- or fifteen-footer rather than bring a bunker or difficult-sided slope into play.

That is another distinction between scoring golf and recreational golf. Recreational golf asks, Can I hit this shot? Scoring golf asks, Should I hit this shot?

Today I was generally asking the second question.

The putting stroke was equally solid. I did not have one of those magical days where every twenty-footer disappears, but I also did not have the three-putt nonsense that can quietly sabotage a round. Speed control was good, and that matters more to me than anything else on the greens. I was consistently leaving the ball in a manageable position when the first putt did not fall. There is nothing particularly glamorous about two-putting from thirty feet, but doing it repeatedly is one of the easiest ways to protect a good round.

The round also benefited from something golfers know but non-golfers sometimes overlook: there was very little wasted motion. I was not searching for balls, repeatedly punching out from trees, taking penalty drops, or trying to recover from bad decisions. The round had a rhythm to it. Tee shot, approach, green, putt. Move on. Tee shot, approach, green, putt. Move on.

That rhythm becomes especially satisfying late in the season because there is something almost tactile about the course at this time of year. The grass still has plenty of life, but the light is different. The shadows are longer. The trees are beginning to thin out. Every once in a while a leaf lands on the fairway and you realize that the calendar is moving whether you are ready for it or not.

I was also reminded of how much I enjoy the longer twilight rounds. There is something about watching the light gradually disappear while still trying to execute a golf swing that makes the final holes feel different from the first ones. The course becomes quieter. The temperature drops another few degrees. The ball seems to disappear into the evening sky a little faster after impact.

And then there was Thomas.

He was visiting from Dallas on business and was not a member of the club, but he knew several members who had arranged for him to play. We talked for a little while before heading out, and eventually ended up playing together. He was a good golfer, and, more importantly, he was enjoyable to play with. There was no unnecessary posturing, no excessive analysis of every shot, and none of that strange competitive behavior that occasionally appears when two strangers are paired together. We simply played.

It turned into a very good game.

Thomas gave me enough resistance to keep the round interesting, and there were several holes where the difference came down to execution rather than some dramatic mistake. That is my favorite kind of competitive golf. Nobody is handing the other player holes. You have to earn them.

There is a particular satisfaction in playing against someone you have just met because there are no assumptions. He does not know how I normally play, I do not know his tendencies, and neither of us has any history to lean on. You find out quickly. How does he handle a difficult lie? Does he attack pins? Does he bail out? What does he do after a bogey? Does he take dead aim after a birdie? Does he protect a lead or continue to attack?

Thomas was steady, and that made the match enjoyable.

I simply happened to be a little steadier.

The decisive difference was probably my ability to keep the ball in play and continue giving myself reasonable looks at birdie. I did not need to manufacture anything spectacular. I just kept putting myself into positions where pars were available and birdies were possible. When opportunities appeared, I took advantage of enough of them to create separation.

And eventually, I bested him.

There was no grand finale to it. Golf rarely needs one. You play the holes, count the shots, shake hands, and walk off the course. The scorecard tells you what happened, but it does not always tell you how it happened. Today, the more important thing was the quality of the golf. The round felt controlled from beginning to end, and that is a much better feeling than simply looking at a number after eighteen holes.

By the time we reached the final holes, the sun had already disappeared below the horizon. There was still just enough residual light to see the fairways and greens, but the course had taken on that dusky blue-gray appearance that lasts only a few minutes before darkness finally wins. The leaves on the ground were more noticeable in the fading light, and the temperature had dropped enough that I was grateful for the jacket I had brought along.

Finishing an eighteen-hole round in those conditions is a very different experience from walking off the course at two o’clock on a July afternoon. There is no heat radiating from the pavement, no humidity hanging in the air, no golfers lingering everywhere around the clubhouse. It is quieter, cooler, and somehow more intimate.

And the golf was worth every minute.

From a technical standpoint, this was one of those rounds where nearly every part of the game cooperated. Driver: excellent. Fairway woods and hybrids: controlled. Iron play: excellent. Wedges: precise. Short game: dependable. Putting: confident and, most importantly, disciplined. Course management: aggressive when appropriate and conservative when the situation demanded it. There were very few wasted shots, and even fewer mental mistakes.

That combination is what makes a round feel complete.

The score is ultimately just the accounting department. The real pleasure comes from knowing that the swing was synchronized, the contact was clean, the club selection was correct, the targets were sensible, and the ball generally went where it was supposed to go. There are rounds where you shoot well despite yourself, and there are rounds where you know exactly why you played well. This was the latter.

It was also one of those afternoons that reminds me why I keep the clubs in rotation even during a demanding hospital schedule. Medicine is wonderfully complicated, but it is rarely simple. Golf, by comparison, gives you a beautifully uncomplicated problem: the ball is sitting there, the target is somewhere ahead, and you have to figure out how to get the ball there.

Then you do it again.

And again.

Eighteen times, give or take a few bad decisions.

Today, the decisions were good, the swings were better, and the weather was about as close to perfect as late September in New England gets. I left the course barely able to see the last few holes, eighteen played, Thomas beaten, and the first leaves of autumn scattered across the fairways.

Not a bad way to spend a Wednesday afternoon after leaving the hospital early.

Sometimes you really do need to get your money’s worth out of those country-club dues.