Blog 439 – 10.19.2016

Most people have a favorite season. My Mom’s was spring. She like a lot of folks hated winter and always looked forward to spring. As s boy and young man autumn was always my preferred season. With the wonderful colors of the changing leaves, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and most of the Christmas season before the first day of winter, autumn has much to recommend it.

I turned twenty in tropical South Vietnam where I spent eleven months. I call that my long hot summer and that experience and over thirty five years living in hot and humid Houston, Texas have helped me decide to spend the next thirty five years or so in a cooler climate where summer is the shortest season and winter the longest.

But I appreciate all the changing seasons. Life is all about change and though many dream about life in the tropics that would grow boring to me as would, as much as I love snow, living near one of the poles where it is cold and snowy year round. I was born and grew up in southeastern Tennessee where we had four pretty equal seasons and I was happy with the weather there and once thought I might return there to live but having spent now several winters further north I think I prefer the cooler climate.

A favorite song of mine that talks about all four seasons is Lance’s love song to Jenny from Camelot called If Ever I Would Leave You. I quote the song completely.

If Ever I Would Leave You
by Frederick Loewe

If ever I would leave you
It wouldn’t be in summer
Seeing you in summer
I never would go
Your hair streaked with sunlight
Your lips red as flame
Your face with a luster
That puts gold to shame.

But if ever I’d ever leave you
It couldn’t be in autumn
How I’d leave in autumn
I never would know.
I’ve seen how you sparkle
When fall nips the air
I know you in autumn
And I must be there.

And could I leave you
Running merrily through the snow
Or on a wintry evening
When you catch the fire’s glow?

If ever I would leave you
How could it be in springtime
Knowing how in spring I’m
Bewitched by you so.
Oh, know, not in springtime,
Summer, winter, or fall
No, never could I leave you
At all.

I wish I could sing it to you and if I ever get a chance I will. And it isn’t that I think I have the greatest voice in the world but to quote a line from another song I love, “Twenty years of practice and Lord above I know how to do it.”

I guess I have come to see myself as a jack of all trades, a man for all seasons.
I have such a glimpse of you as well. It has and continues to be my pleasure to share this path, this journey, and the changing of the seasons with you.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White