November Days

November has always made me uneasy.  As someone who tends toward the melancholic, I am lured even deeper into my moods when November's salt marshes bleach to shades of bone and its sky to shades of grey.  Don't get me wrong, I rather enjoy this feeling of teetering on the edge of winter's ice and sleet.  Besides, November is the month of counting blessings, of gathering our strength and supplies for the coming months of dark and cold.  It is the month I remember my father the most, gone now for a quarter of a century, but still present in the ocean's spray and the shiver of fallen leaves.  Even as I type this, I am almost back there, riding beside him in his tomato-soup red GMC down the old beach roads on a drizzly day.  The heater steams my wool socks.  Between us on the seat rest a jumble of receipts, a Stanley tape measure, and, as always, a pack of Wrigley's.  He is singing Roger Miller, "Trailers for sale or rent, rooms to let--fifty cents . . ." and I settle farther down into the seat, lean my head against the fogged window, let my thoughts drift.  Outside, houses and trees rush past, but we are in no hurry, my father and me.