Four Eyes

I've never really been a fan of the Fall.  I blame it on growing up in Arizona...and, quite frankly, the process of growing up.  Fall meant school was starting, there was another year until my birthday and it was going to be getting cold.  It never gets that cold in AZ, but when it's all you know, it gets pretty dang cold.  Some days, I wished I had a hat.

Anyway, as I was saying, I've never been a fan of the Fall.  Even moving up here to Northern California, where we have at least three seasons (Rainy, Hot and Pleasant), I never really got excited about it.  Here, it meant the end of daylight savings time (and in the Redwoods, where I lived, that meant night starts around three in the afternoon) and the beginning of the fall season of outdoor education at the camp I worked at (a significantly more rigorous schedule than the summer one).

And so, it was my hmphh-ing and  silence that accompanied my new wife's exclamations about the beauty of the Fall.  She loves the vineyards, the maple trees, and the crisp cooler weather.  She loves to walk to the coffee shop and take the route that has inadequate sidewalks and low hanging branches just because that's the street that has all the leaves along the side.  She likes the sound of the leaves under her feet and giggles when she finds just the right kind at just the right stage of decomposition to make just the right crinkle.  She ooohs and aaahs and points...and its catchy. 

Another thing my wife loves to see--which I had never really noticed before--is the golden light of sunset.  I mean, I don't usually close my eyes during that time, but I've never stopped and said "Wow".  She has.  She's done it several times a week since we've gotten married.  She'll stop whatever we're doing, wherever we are and point at some wall or rock or telephone pole and exclaim in reverant awe how beautiful "this time of day" makes everything.  Its her favorite time of day.  I think if the sun set in the morning instead of the night she'd get up early every day. 

Needless to say, I notice these things now as well.  I noticed the vineyard behind our house this afternoon, all decked out in a pantheon of color that says to the still green oak tree standing in the middle, "I'll see your evergreen glory and raise you eighteen shades of yellow."  I noticed the golden glow of the sunset splash across our wall--the big blank wall we'd put pictures on if we had any--and realized that if we could just capture that particular shade of golden rapture, the pictures would just be in the way. 

There are a lot of things I see now that I've been married for a few months.  My wife is like that sunset illumination, taking objects I considered ordinary and commonplace and revealing the beauty that's been there all along.  Showing me, without ever actually showing me, what is good and pleasant and beautiful right here, right now.  Things in nature, things in other people, things in myself.  I think that's one of my favorite things about marriage--even just community in general.  The way it helps you to see and feel and experience things you'll never have time or opportunity or ability to see or feel or experience for yourself.  Our world is just too big, too beautiful and too exciting for one pair of eyes alone.  Good thing I now have two.