Call it autumn or fall, you should have a ball

My father's Skype status is "fall season has finally arrived". It was something he put up more than a year ago--all year round, it was irrelevant, until autumn came back again and lo and behold, the status had meaning again.

I found other meaning in that status, too. My father is in his fifties, my mother is in her forties. I can safely say that they count as "middle aged"; they are in the autumn of their lives. They are the last generation to grow up without a cell phone. They can no longer party as hard as they used to. Naptime is sacred and inviolable. The quirks of a settled and routine life characterise their existence.

They are also in the autumn of their marriage: in the spring they wed, in the summer they planted and raised, and now in the autumn it is time to reap what they sowed all those years ago. I am talking, of course, about raising children. My brother and me. Both of us are adults in our early twenties now.

They say sixty (or is it fifty?) is the youth of old age. The body shows signs of departing youth, and the typical bodily ailments start to set in. Instead of the fresh green and colourful blooms of spring, the autumn of one's life is arrayed in the oranges, reds and yellows of dying leaves. The traffic-light yellow leaf glows brightly as it signifies change. A red leaf portrays the upcoming nuptials of the next generation as, one after another, they climb aboard the marriage bandwagon. Another leaf glows orange: prediabetes and cavitated teeth. One brown leaf trembles and falls: the death of a parent. So many shades of leaves, all neatly pressed between the pages of a book and scrapbooked into eternity.

Autumn arrives, as it inevitably will. It is the spring of winter and the winter of summer; bleaker than the preceding season but livelier than the upcoming one. Every season has its colours, and the colours of autumn are unique and only come once in a lifetime. Don't be so busy counting apples that you have no time to taste the apple cider.