Can’t wait for fall Gary Smith

Calendar, not temperature, dictates spouse’s seasonal shift

There exists, somewhere in the Smith family photo archives (a collection of boxes in my sister’s attic, at this point), a picture of my brother and me from Christmas in the late 1960s.

We stand in the front yard of our house on an Air Force base in Puerto Rico, next to a palm tree. Because it’s Christmas Day we’re both still in our pajamas. From our eyebrows up we are identical, because Air Force barbers will listen patiently to what you’d like in a haircut and then proceed to give you a high-and-tight.

Since, at this point in the history of personal photography, it was required that the sun be behind the photographer, we’re both squinting and looking a lot like we’d much rather be somewhere else. This is one of those circumstances where truth and photographic expression intersect, because it was already in the 80s and we were wearing the sweatshirts my sister had sent us from college.

Historically — yes, I looked it up — the average temperature in Puerto Rico in December, one of the island’s coldest months, is the mid80s. Average low is the low 80s. Average high? High 80s. It’s 80-plus degrees in Puerto Rico in December. You can fill in the time later.

I mention this not just because a photo of two kids with bad crew cuts looking miserable in sweatshirts next to a palm tree is really all you need to know about the military dependent experience. Which, it is.

I mention it because my sister sent us sweatshirts, which happen to be from a college in a state we’d been told is our home, although we’d never lived there and only visited for funerals. Throughout the vast majority of the country, including the state where she was living, sweatshirts were an excellent choice. On an island with a tropical climate, they were about as useful as snow skis.

Her thinking was, I’m sure, that it’s December, everyone where she lived was wearing sweatshirts and boys love sweatshirts, so … sweatshirts bound for Puerto Rico!

It was Christmas, so, the thought definitely counted (hence the picture confirming to her that, for at least the briefest of moments, we had worn them and “loved them!”). But, 80-plus degrees and sweatshirts?

I think of that photo just about every time I drive up to my house these days and see that the Lovely Mrs. Smith has already started her fall decorations, which, according to recent experience and projection, predates the actual start of any meteorological evidence of fall.

As I write this, it’s 80 degrees. As I look ahead, it’s going to be 80 degrees. I’m not sure when this changes, but there’s a real fear (not based in experience or science) that the pumpkins currently adorning our front doorway will cook into self-contained pies before it’s actually cool enough for them to be weather-appropriate.

And yet, as I drive around, I notice we’re not the only ones who want to believe in Sweater Weather and leaves that turn colors before they just wilt and fall off. And we’re not the only ones having the “so, you think we might be jumping the gun a bit on this ?” conversation. I’ve discovered that’s a conversation best held internally. Kept to yourself.

It is a fact of the human condition that we tend to place more credence in what our memories tell us about the calendar than what our senses do. This from someone who has celebrated Christmas on an equatorial island, gathered around a shipped-in tree that arrived browner than the lettuce that was also shipped in, and who has hunted Easter eggs in snow banks. For the record, it did make them easier to find. Just check the holes. Best if you don’t have a dog.

If marriage is the triumph of hope over experience, seasonal decorating is ignoring the reality of our surroundings and our own lyin’ eyes in favor of a world we’d like to be living in. Which explains the sweaters I see at football games.

At some point over the next few weeks we’ll be taking a trip to a corn maze and planning our Halloween costumes. All of which will need to take into account that we may need to hydrate and use cooling fabrics.

And if we really need a fresh idea more indicative of a ridiculous situation and inappropriate clothing, I’ve got one.

We can go as two kids wearing sweatshirts in Puerto Rico.