Article: Thoughts on the Seasons of Things

When people find out that I was 69 when ROSES was accepted for publication, and 70 shortly thereafter, the comment that usually follows is: “Don’t you wish you’d started writing earlier?” Of course the implication hangs in the air like the breeze from an overhead fan that I’d have more years to write books and to enjoy the fruits of my labor if I’d done so. To those well-meaning folks I say simply, “It wasn’t the season.”

Season is defined as a section of the year with distinct characteristics of temperature and rainfall, and as we all know, so it is with the four periods in life. But they can hold surprises—a snow fall at the height of spring, a robin in the heart of winter, and so it was with me. Here I was, entering my golden years pondering what in the world was left to aspire to at this late date except to stay healthy and to learn French and maybe the piano, when lo and behold a robin appeared.

It happened quite ordinarily. I was drinking my morning coffee when I asked the Almighty, “Now what am I supposed to do with the rest of my life?

And the answer came clearly, “You will get down the book you started years ago and finish it.”

Oh, no! I said, thinking of the gargantuan collection of yellowed, typewriter written, hand-scrawled pages of the manuscript comprised during a time of illness twenty years before and when health returned, promptly forgotten.

Oh yes! I was told. ‘Tis now the season for ROSES.

I was sixty-five years old.