Something about the weather changing is reminding me that I have no parents. That shift in the wind, the cooler nights, leaves taking on their tints of carmine and burgundy — that is to say, red — and yellow and orange and the less glamorous rattling oak-leaf brown. I've always thought there was a warning in this change, one of those natural phenomena that makes humans, like bears, get ready for a kind of hibernation. And usually I like it. My mind goes to fires in the woodstove, a gluttony of novel-reading, the anticipation of all those over-hyped glitzy holidays I love so well.

But this year, I feel as though autumn isn't just a season approaching, one in a comforting circle of seasons, to be followed by winter, and then spring and summer again. I'm getting the creepy feeling that my life is suddenly autumnal, too, heading into its winter, and in the metaphor of a life, you only get one round.

My mom's been dead for four years, and my dad for an unbelievable twenty. I'm the oldest kid in the family, and I have no children of my own. Suddenly, with the sun rising later and later and leaves blowing all over the driveway, I feel like my turn is coming.

I don't actually envy people who are taking care of aging parents, but I wish mine were still around. Think of the fabuous arguments we could be having, for instance, over this year's election! My parents excelled at a kind of sarcastic East Coast raucous disdain, and I'd love to hear them aim both barrels at the current administration. Karl Rove would not survive. And I could ask my dad why the heck he went to law school, anyway, if he never meant to practice, and get my mom to teach me to turn the heel on a sock again.

But mostly I could watch them, so different from each other and so familiar, and be reminded of where I belong. They're with me when I look in the mirror — his wide-spaced eyes, but her color. His thick wrists next to her practical palms. But you can't spend much time gazing in the mirror — it's boring, for one thing, and who else is going to sweep the driveway?

I guess it comes down to the stunningly obvious: I don't want to get old and die. Not ever. If they were here, I could sit on the porch and enjoy this blustery weather without a care in the world, because I wouldn't be first in line when the guy with the hood and the scythe came nosing around. I could bow politely and let them precede me through the doorway. "Age before Beauty!" as my grandmother used to say. There'd still be a nice big buffer between me and the snows to come.