November and Daylight Savings Time have arrived. Our New York weather is sunny and warm, more September than November,with the leaves late in turning this year and t the height of peak color. From the vantage point of my bed, I can see leaves the color of sliced lemons flying past a sea of green.

My mother stopped in after church yesterday and told me to drive down Beechmont and see the trees. Beechmont is a long, wide boulevard that bisects the northern and southern half of the city. It was established in the late 1800's and large family homes were built along its borders on sizeable plots. The drive is gently curved with rolling hills. The trees hang over the drive, most of them planted at least a century ago. Giant oaks, poplars, and maples grow with luxury and provide screening and shade to front porches and terraced lawns.

We lived on a street off of this drive when I was growing up. Our house was a Dutch Colonial tucked into the bend in a road at the bottom of a hill. We were one house past the divide on our street where small houses on tiny lawns grew into expansive lawns and ample homes. We knew we were imposters in the neighborhood. No one had to tell us that we belonged more at the other end of the street than ours. Our lives did not resemble those of our neighbosr, who had a daily domestic and took cocktails before dinner on the back lawn on Adirondack chairs, the mother in a dress and pearls.

I'm sure we spoiled many a cocktail hour for them as my mother rounded up her five daughters and plenty of voices were raised as we squabbled over whose turn it was to set the table and do the dishes. My father had a cocktail before dinner, but he mixed it himself and drank it at the kitchen table. Our neighbors were lovely people, but something was silent about them. After twenty years of living next to them, I could not tell you the timber of their voices. I mostly remermber the neat bundle of garbage that their maid threw out each night before walking to the bus stop. That, and the time the wife was seen picking up a stray fallen leaf with a kleenex off their iimmaculate lawn and putting it into her pocket.

Raking leaves was a huge activity in the fall. My father enlisted all of us to rake up the leaves, but we gladly helped because the end result was a bonfire on the back lawn and the feeling of magic as stray leaves floated up into the thermal plume and hovered for seconds between life and death, between weightlessness and ash. One evening I was swinging on the swings, playing a game of parachute, where you swung as high as possible, then jumped off and tried to land farther than your opponent. Only I was playing by myself that night, keeping my father company while he burned a pile of leaves. As I pumped higher and higher on the old, rusty red swing set, the flames grew along with me. The red of the swing and the red of the fire came closer and closer, mesmerizing me until all I could see was swinging sky and crackling fire and sultry smudges of black smoke and without a thought, I parachuted off the the swing, landing father than I ever had before, landing with my feet on the edges of the fire circle, and stood wavering, my hands moving like the blades of a helicopter as I tried to remain upright and not fall onto the coals.

My father grabbed me by the hand and pulled me back and I landed with a thud on the grass. Go inside and go to bed he yelled at me and I ran inside to find my mother who was putting on perfume in preparation of going out. She had no sympathy for my trembling body and scolded me for such a stupid act. I went to bed long before the sun had set, and my pillow smelled like wood smoke the next morning from my hair.

The sun is back in the mornings now that the time has changed. It is streaming through the windows in the bedroom, landing directly in my eyes, telling me it is time to log off and take a shower. The leaves make a beautiful lacy scrim on the wall. Soon they will be gone and November will revert to the stark outlines of line and form. I don't mind seeing the trees undressed. I enjoy their long excalamation points against a blue sky. I like the starkness of late autumn and early winter, when the grass is still green and the trees provide the hardscape of structure. I look forward to early nights and the excess of the holidays and houses lit from within against the bare ink of winter sky.