Senior Awakening

Senior Awakening 

By La Shawn Baker

By the time I stepped outside the leaves were on fire bursting with a sea of colors that only resided in a crayon box. The funny thing is my mind distinctively remembers going to sleep in the  richness of Spring blossoms. The scents of jasmine, lavender, and roses acts as an ambrosia, their sweet aroma lulling me into the calming embrace of spring. 

I faintly remember  with each breath I would inhale life and exhale a memory of time long forgotten, buried in the recess of my mind. The fog of age hinders my body but,every now and then I can still recall the fluttering of birds nesting in the distance. The smell of a flower, and a woman in a purple and yellow sundress. 

 I further recall the softness of the spring breeze reminiscing my lover's  soothing, gentle touch. With each invisible kiss  of the wind I remember her, it, and the way multicolored kites dancing high. The innocent giggles of children rolling on freshly mowed lawns. It was spring then and the small pond under the apple trees capturing the amber rays dancing through green leaves and white blossoms. 

Those days are now faded like my memories lingering in some part of my cognitive haze. The once brilliant drapery of colors are now fading from green to a fiery orange, red, burgundy, and purples of an early fall that we shared in driving through Vermont and Maine. The late evening sun painted the horizon with soft rose hues. 

Time seems to be an allusive commodity. I once had it on my side, as a child.  I was born in the spring and with each new year I held an anticipation of releasing the cold of winter to the birth of springtime. As a teenager and a young adult I was the master of my universe nothing could stop me. I loved without committing to anything or to anyone. I was “the Master of the now,” yet knowing nothing. 

By the springtime of my twenty-six year, I found something rare and beautiful. As I recall it now, love seems to always bloom in the spring and for me it was no different. For me it was that purple and yellow dress. 

The sigh he gave spoke of past longing. His eyes cast a sadness that only he could explain, but he didn’t.  

 His voice was weak when he spoke again, I guess my  memories are calculated by the seasons of time.  His weak laughter brought  a smile to his aged face. Do you remember the spring? He said it to everyone but no one, “I do.”  Spring was for adults my mother would say, as she put away all memories of winter.   

As a man in the spring of my thirtieth year my first child was born; subsequently for three or four springs, I brought life into this world. I almost forgot about that. Shaking his head from side to side, he drifted back into his thoughts without words this time. 

He rocked, pulling the old army blanket up to shelter him from the invisible chill. His voice cracked out of nowhere. You know, my first born was a girl, she looked like her mother, with her big eyes the color of coco and a curly head of red hair. 

The spring of my thirty second year my lover gave me the first male to carry the family name… my name… shaking his  hand at the invisible entity of time.

 “Yep” a son, my son. A small tear drifted down his cheek, followed by more, I lost my son you know, he died in the fall of his twentieth year, war, took him… his voice drifted off again, this time. He did not recover as quickly as before.  “Did you know he looked more like me?”

The spring of my forty-eighth year, I watched the last of my children graduate from college, and me and the love of my life decided to travel the world. It may sound silly, but we loved Paris in the spring, and we fell in love all over again. We did not move as fast so the colors would last.

In the fall of her sixty-ninth year, my love was lost to a time. Her once reddish-brown hair was white from time. Her once smooth as silk skin held her story… I laid her to rest.. Somewhere… 

But it escapes me. His voice lost something, the power it once held was now a whisper. I miss her… his voice trailed off to nothing… 

Time is slipping now, and the things I once loved left me in a voided cocoon of emptiness. I am here all alone and the things I recall are but passages of my time.

My last memory is of the spring of my seventy-fifth  year and something in my mind changed. I could hear her calling to me. Whispering my name within the wind one day I followed her voice, letting it wrap me in a memory of forgotten love. That day, the way home seemed longer than usual, even though I walked the same way I did in my twenties, the landmarks of my thirty’s, and the joy of my fifties. The lost of my sixties, and the pain of my seventies  

Little by little, with each step, every day I forgot my way.  

Until spring forgot me and fall found me and by the time I stepped outside, the leaves of my past were no longer, my memories of what had faded to what I lost. I now live in my fall awakening and my youthful days rest in the recesses of my mind until spring rises once again and the pathways of life are no longer etched on my face and the spring of my youth, is faded to something I can not recall All I know is that my heart lost its last beat in the fall among the fiery orange of the trees, the orangish pink of the sun rise and on the other side of life with my son  and wife.