Two Home Towns

Today was the beginning of my 41st year on this little ball of dirt tucked away in our non-descript corner of the universe. My birthday came and went with little fanfare since I was on a business trip to Houston, but I did get a few calls and emails from around the country over the course of the day, which was really nice. Also, the Greatest Kid in the World answered my nightly call to her last night by singing “Happy Birthday” to me over the phone. It made my day.

You know how some people joke about how “this is my 6th 39th birthday” as a way of not accepting the label of “40?” For whatever reason I didn’t feel that way at all when I turned 40. Maybe I had been looking at that number for a while and had adjusted to it well in advance. Maybe there was some novelty to being 40 that caused it not to feel like the downer that so many people talk about. Whatever the reason, I had no trouble at all accepting “40″, but I don’t much like “41.” Can’t explain it.

Ironically enough, I feel younger this birthday than I did on my last. But then I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s the subject of my next post.

Thanksgiving this year finds me in my ancestral home – that coastal land along South Carolina’s border with the Atlantic Ocean. From the colonial charm of Beaufort all of the way up to the tacky disposability of Myrtle Beach this place tends to be a soggy and hot. Something like the endless bayous of Louisiana I suspect, though far smaller in it’s total acreage of waterways, cypress trees and alligators.

The Gulf Stream’s northward flow up from the tropics has a lot to do with the region’s tenacious grip on warmer weather. The waters that flow northward from the Caribbean serve to moderate the temperature in the winter months quite a bit. Although it can get quite cold here for a day or two at a time it does so only rarely. I can only remember daytime temperatures in the twenties once or twice throughout the time that I grew up. Even during the nighttime sub-freezing weather hardly asserts itself until Christmas or later. I can clearly recall swatting mosquitoes on more than one Thanksgiving Day. Happily, this is not one of those years. My parents report that November has had it’s share frost already, with more than a few nights below freezing and some days that have barely warmed above 50 degrees. That’s pretty cool for autumn hereabouts, and the mosquitoes have consequently been dispatched into next year – probably some time in April if I had to guess.

The days of my youth happened here, and fall has been my favorite season ever since. Maybe that’s because it was so nice back then to be outside without feeling oppressed by the dead, dank heat of a summer past it’s prime. The occasionally crisp air was such a sharp contrast to the everyday experience of life in the Lowcountry that I remember feeling genuine exhilaration at those rare times when it felt like autumn. Between the damp gray days of rain there were sapphire skies, cold breezes and warm fires. Hidden among the relentless green of the pine trees and live oaks there were the variable colors of deciduous hardwoods – the purple leaves of maples, the plain browns of black jack oaks, the ocher of hickory and the mottled yellows of tulip poplars. Tucked between the haze of summer and the overcast of winter were dusky sunsets with whole horizons of unbroken copper and bronze, thin crescent moons and bright, steady stars.

Yesterday was one of those days. In the afternoon the sun filtered through the winnowed tree canopies of late November with that curious golden light that is peculiar to the autumn. Outside in the quiet of the waning year there was a hint of the musky smell of burning leaves somewhere far away. Inside there was the smell of roasting pork, cinnamon and clove, baked apples and boiling potatoes. It was and just as rare and special as it always has been.

I appreciate spring and summer more than I once did, but fall remains my favorite.

When I’m in town my morning routine is something that I value. It’s certainly not the fastest way to get to work, but I love the relaxing, predictable and healthy start to my day. I get up, shower, make breakfast, and catch up on the news and blogs over a stout cup of french pressed coffee. After that I get dressed, ride the elevator down to my car and drive to work. I could do it with my eyes shut. Well, except maybe for the part where I read the news and blogs.

Anyway, this morning when I went to get dressed I remembered that every stitch of quality clothing I had was at the cleaners across the street. Since I had left the office directly for Llano on Friday I had not been in town to pick up my cleaning over the weekend. They don’t open early enough for my taste, so I decided to wear a pair of slacks that I would not choose under other circumstances. You might think of them as my emergency backup pants for situations like today. It had been a while since I reached for them last, and as a result I was in for a surprise.

In addition to being kind of dull and plain, these slacks are now also WAY too big. It’s one thing for your pants to have a little room at the waist band. It’s another for them to be so loose that they will literally fall off without a belt. To my surprise, that’s the condition I found them in this morning. They were so over sized that I actually had to fold them over a little on either side so that they didn’t scrunch up like clown pants. There was no choice – I had to go to the cleaners and pickup my regular clothes. No way I can wear those “Plan B” pants to work anymore. But as I dressed for the 2nd time this morning I realized that my regular clothes are getting a bit baggy in most cases too.

All of this has me wondering – before I started working out again this year just how fat was I anyway? I don’t think of myself as being super trim now (not yet at least) but when I look at how big these pants have gotten it really strains my imagination that they were once a close fit. My weight has dropped some, but I guess my body fat must be dropping a lot faster than my weight. No other explanation.

Another really nice benefit of this intense exercise regimen. I haven’t been able to work out since I got sick on Friday, but I’m really, really looking forward to getting back to it ASAP. For a variety of reasons.