Publisher's Point Of View
Robert Allan Hooftallen

My son is quite a talker these days. Sharing the daily additions to his vocabulary adds immeasurable joy to our lives.

At least once a week, I stay in bed until 10 or so with him. While his sister crashes at the drop of a hat, he goes "nightnight" kicking and screaming (sometimes literally) often after 10. That makes the rising a little more of a challenge and while the girls in the house head to school and work, Jakee and I pull the window curtains and catch up on some bad-boyafter we're-supposed-to-be-up sleep.

Sadly, we do rise and go our different directions, whatever the time. And when he's with me, he's confident the rules are somewhat less framed than they are when the easily offended girls are around.

On our short drive to Jakee's second home on Turner Street, we spin tires, swerve around, crank the music, stop by the creek to marvel at its constant flow and generally just goof off in every way imaginable until we get there.

On Wednesday, he noticed the leaves were falling quite heavily from the trees. I could see his recognition thereof hit him as a potentially troublesome development. He pointed at the ones catching themselves on the windshield, but said nothing. I prompted him, a couple of times, but still nothing.

Finally, he had studied the situation long enough and came up with this: "The leaves are all falling, da da, what are we going to do?"

When I stopped laughing, I said, "We'll just wait around for a few months, boy, and then we'll get to watch them all grow back."

That was good enough for him and he started driving his truck on his legs again, making the classic vroom, vroom noise.

To me, the leaves were one of the hundreds of daily reminders that time is

continuing on its course at a pace that seems to hasten with each day.

I can remember when I dreaded autumn, despite its beauty, because I did not want to see summer go. In a few hours, I'll drive over Cowley Hill under cloudless skies, if the crystal clear of the night remains. The maple trees are fire on the hillside and the nut trees gold and yellow. It is an amazing drive at this time of the year.

Looking upon that kind of beauty cannot help but change your day. And even though it costs me a small fortune to make the commute, it is an investment in sanity because for most of those 25 minutes, the beauty around me is sanity in slow motion.

I am looking particularly forward to it today. Perhaps it'll insulate me from what I know is going to be one of those days that will be remembered for its challenge, defeat and aftermath.

It's going to be a long night.