Mrs. Teabody on an Autumn Evening




Good Evening, Gentle Reader from the gloriously autumnal mountain where Mrs. Teabody can finally announce with some degree of hopefulness, October is here. Not everyone is in love with these whirling winds, leaden skies, cooler temperatures and the accompanying shivers, but there are many marvelous things about autumn, not the least of which is that beautiful garbage of Nature—autumn leaves. Poets rhapsodize about this colorful death. The French invented the song “Les feu Mesmortes” which became “Autumn Leaves” first made popular in the United States by Andy Williams who at the height of his popularity could have sung the Affordable Care Act and had everyone happily humming along.

At the end of this little message you will find links to five very different covers and Mrs. Teabody hopes you will find one of them to your liking. Turns out this October standard has been covered by literally almost everyone who is anyone—everyone from Dolly Parton to Ferrante and Teicher and if you know how to pronounce that last duo, then welcome to old cootdom. Would you care for some Cracker Jack?

On days like today after the storms have beaten the porch boxes into an unrecoverable state of collapse, Mr. Teabody floats along on the fringes of the gardening enterprise at Chez Teabody wearing a gloomy visage. All the seed pods have been gathered and labeled and boxes have been found that will winter house the bulbs from the cannas that have offered such bright crimson flags for several months. Cone flowers and peony foliage have been rendered husk like. A few dozen blooms straggle on the rose bushes. The hollies -- all green-leaved and bright berried seem to taunt all their struggling neighbors. The leggy impatiens grow impatient for their next transition. Like it or not, the garden is dying. And isn’t it the hardest thing in the world by times to let go, to say Farewell to something, to someone that you have loved so well? One of Mrs. Teabody’s favorite poems is irrevocably tied with this most melancholy of seasons and it follows:

Spring & Fall: to a young child

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Yes, there is mourning for the un-leaving, for the loss of vitality in the once green and flowering plant. Change, while inevitable, is seldom without a degree of fall out. Change can be as unnerving as getting behind the wheel of a car one has never driven before; it can be as disheartening as realizing that someone has eaten the last crust of bread and that slice of toast that would have paired so well with some wild blueberry jam will not be tasted—not today anyway. Change can leave the heart longing for the familiar, the beloved, the reliable, the expected, the known. Mrs. Teabody knows a little girl who refused to take off her dress at the end of the day because she wanted to wear it forever so that the next day would be exactly the same. To save Time in a bottle . . .

The very essence of life is change. Embrace it. A brave friend heals in a distant hospital because change has meant the end of her disease. Blank canvases will change into pictures through bold brush strokes; words will dance across the page in happy company with each other changing their arrangement into a poem, spools of thread and bits of cloth will change into a comforting quilt . And in the garden, the withered stalks with their dulled thorns and languishing blooms will gurgle and spit and re-foilate in just a few months’ time. So mourn the autumn leaves but don’t hesitate to open your heart to all the glorious surprises of Nature in its next season. 

The “Really? Jerry lee Lewis? Version:

The “We sing really well” Coasters version:

The one that made it an inescapable part of Boomers’ soundtrack, Andy Williams

The ever-groovy Eric Clapton

The contemporary Diana Krall

Oh and Mrs. Teabody would love to hear which version is your favorite.


Comments

  1. Sandra BartonOctober 13, 2013 at 10:54 AM

    Diana Krall, with Andy Williams a close second...

    ReplyDelete

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