NOVEMBER: the month before December, that most special month. We count the days more closely when December comes. Christmas is December. December is our winter month, as we in nonwintry countries would like to call it. Memories of a previous generation, of a time when our ecology was healthy and the climate was not threatened by any warming, except those brought about by what seemed then to be our eternal summer, had October and November as special months.
For those who lived in the province in the 1960s, or even farther back, October saw the growth of tall grasses that have feather-like blooms at their tips. My grandmother would tell us then that the wind was coming as she pointed to us from the huge window of our living room the mascot of the cold days and nights. Those white things were waiting to be blown away.
Something happened to this earth on its way to experiencing climate change. The cold days disappeared. If the day gets chilly, that means the dip in the temperature is caused by storms. The gray days, as captured in a month, for example, are produced by a sun that threatens to collapse. Or haven’t you heard of the six days of darkness in December?
The American poet Anne Sexton once said: “I know that I have died before—once in November.” It is unfair to justify this statement by saying, well, Sexton did commit suicide. But November is, indeed, an anomalous month—it is not yet there, at the end of the year; it is at the doorway to December’s wreaths and power trees with trimmings.
We all die in November. The celebration of the dead on this side of the world happens in November.
Many other things happen in November. There are these “awareness” days that call attention to diseases and afflictions. Ponder on this list: Lung Awareness Month, Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, Epilepsy Awareness Month and National Pulmonary Awareness Month, just to mention a few.
November also celebrates concerns, advocacies and developments in society. November is Novel Writing Awareness Month. The country, through the Manila Critics Circle and the National Book Development Board, recently bestowed prizes on writers not only of fiction, but also of poetry, essays, social-science textbooks and coffee-table books.
November is also the month to be aware of the sweet potato. I can only assume that, in other places, in temperate zones, sweet potatoes are harvested sometime this month, which is mid-autumn. In our case, we do not have to declare any month for us to be aware of sweet potatoes. Poverty has made us acutely aware of their significance: they are extenders, not of food, but of life. They are also boringly present in any home that does not experience surplus and a variety of diets. What we can, perhaps, espouse is a month when we cannot be made aware of sweet potatoes—and bitter poverty.
Despite being an old month, the fact that November is the second to the last month that date a year is quite updated. If we are to believe the postings on the Internet, the month has been honored by bloggers as National Blogposting Month. Why? Ask the bloggers.
November is also Transgender Awareness Month. This is ironic, because it is in November when we started forgetting about the killing of a transgender woman. In place of the plea for justice, we are pleading our government to work on solving Metro Manila’s traffic and to decongest our ports. We are greatly aware that inside those containers are products that we pathetically equate with the celebration of Christmas. Ham, cheese, cold cuts and other commodities may be absent from our Christmas table this year. We are aware of this and are now anxious about it.
I like to say that November is the last month when we can imagine fall, or autumn. This season, which is always associated with leaves of green and gold, is important to me. That old warhorse of a song, “Autumn Leaves”, was my parents’ theme song. It was the song that brought them together and had kept them together through the years. My father and mother had not seen any autumn leaf when they decided, years and years ago, that that song would bind their love and life together. We often teased them about this. But like any couple of their generation, they were not self-conscious about their choice. I am certain that there are other couples out there who also have a claim to the song.
My father passed on years ago; my mother, I think, has stopped claiming the song about autumn leaves that drift by the window. There is no window in her life that opens to trees with leaves falling. The windows of her room are always kept shut. She is deathly afraid of thieves. She listens to the radio and watches the television, and her fears are confirmed daily. I believe, though, that she hums the song to herself, and I know that she misses my father as the days grow long. All in the month of November.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano