“Come little leaves,” said the wind one day,
“Come o’er the meadows with me and play;
Put on your dresses of red and gold,
For summer is gone and the days grow cold.”

George Cooper

EPHEMERIS FOR THE SECOND WEEK OF MIDDLE FALL
The new Buzzard Migration Moon waxes throughout the week, entering its second quarter at 7:42 p.m. on October 25. Rising in the middle of the day and setting at night, the moon moves overhead in the evening.

FINDING RABBIE
Every year when the weather cools, I start to clean out the attic.

There are all kinds of things in the attic. I have an old cardboard box full of all the letters that I received between about 1956 and the middle 1980s. The kitchen table that I ate on as a child is there; it warped one year in the rain, and I have never been able to fix it. Three of the chairs that go with that table are up there, too.

In one corner, on its side, is the high chair that our two daughters used. There is a corner full of camping and hiking gear that we have superceded by getting an old RV. There are lots and lots of books. There are seven Easter baskets that we have not used in decades.

As I sort through all of this, hanging on to most of it, moving it from one pile to another, I always run into Rabbie, the Rabbit. Rabbie was the favorite stuffed animal of our oldest daughter. He now has lost all of his fur and most of his innards.  He is dirty and worn and sad. The daughter who would not part with it, who carried it around like a security blanket 43 years ago, just makes a face when I ask her if she wants it. She won’t even touch it.

Each time I dig up Rabbie, I wonder if I should get rid of him, but then I just can’t let him go. It’s like that with most of the things in the attic. If they were all taken up in some kind of Junk Rapture, I wouldn’t miss any of them. But once I touch them, then the memories pour in. The objects are the keystones to those parts of my life. I can’t throw them out. Life is fragile and ephemeral, and all its pieces turn to dust. So I dust them off and shuffle them to a different place, put them under something else to be exhumed next year.

I rationalize that my junk is actually an important mnemonic device. The books that I keep throughout the house, the woodshed and the attic are good examples of the mnemonic role junk plays in my life. My Greek books remind me of my dream of reading Homer in the original. My martial arts books tell me that once I wanted to be a Master. And so on.

Gradually, those associations are dimming. If I have come to realize the residual power of objects, I have also started to learn a little about the natural attrition of such power. This October when I restacked the attic trash, I actually took a couple of items down to the curb and set them out for someone to find. Once again, however, I tucked Rabbie out of sight in a place I would find him next year. Maybe I’ll be ready for him in 2010. He is, after all, the final exam for my growing up; I will never get through the Iliad in Greek, but maybe I will someday toss the security bunny.