Ben East

The air and leaves outside turn to fall.

In the week ahead we’ll celebrate Rosh Hashanah, Navrathri, and the official start of Autumn. I’ll hold the first book discussion for my debut novel, 18 months old already.

My Foreign Service colleagues and I will start the annual ritual of progress into new jobs, new countries, new friends. New satisfactions.

Today I bid farewell to summer in the following ways. I pitched four innings for Mohan’s Little League Oakland A’s (the score says we lost but we played like winners). I drank a juice box in the piney shade behind home plate. I prepped for a book discussion and wound the propeller on my next book: lovers of satire and government silliness will find it at Amazon starting Thursday.

I washed the kitchen windows and the sliding glass door out back. Window cleaner, vindow viper, call me what you will: we are letting in more light than ever.

I drank a few beers. I updated my website. I don’t give a damn listening to old Foo Fighters. Later we’ll eat ice cream and dine out so there’ll be no dishes and no dinner prep. We’ll build a hut out of dough for our Navrathri display to be unveiled among friends very soon. I built those steps myself: 2-by-4’s, planks, bolts thicker than my fingers and drill bits to match.

Last week a friend and a cousin each lost a mother.

Today I swept the back porch and rolled up the hose.

Life is hard, but the living can be good. Happy autumn.