In many parts of the globe, the leaves have already turned and probably have even fallen.  I lived in places where there were visible seasons, where the leaves turned many shades of yellow, orange and red, where snow fell afterwards.  Sometimes, I even get sentimental for those visual reminders of the seasons changing.  I intended to write about something else, but before I sat down to do this I went outside to get an orange, something I do often as a pick-me-up.  The orange tree in my front yard is, very simply, the most beautiful part of this house.  And it’s prolific.  It produces many oranges for much longer than any other tree around, oranges that are consistent, a little small, but very sweet, a different kind of sweet in that it has a tiny sprinkling of sour, with more juice than five oranges all packed into one.  Never once has anyone when presented with one of my oranges not said these are the best oranges I’ve ever had.  Orange trees are always green.  In fact, here, all but the Sycamore and Maple trees remain green, and there aren’t many of those.  The grass too remains green.  I suppose that’s why most people say California lacks seasons, but I disagree.  Every place has seasons; it’s just that there are different kinds, different degrees, different signs.  So as I stood there with my feet in the now-cold but still-green St. Augustine grass that grows under my orange tree, I saw it, my sign of the seasons.  There, hidden in the inner branches of my orange tree, was that sign — very small, very green round creations that will turn orange and get bigger, right as the warmth returns.  I find it interesting that the little oranges begin to grow right as winter starts, that as everything sleeps, they start to form.  And following the winter rains (yes it only rains in the winter here), I will look at the tree one morning in March see the then-small oranges, hoping for those oranges to get a little bigger.  And every year, without fail, they do get bigger.  When the tree is in the “orange months”, there are so many I can’t eat them all, and I eat them all the time, so that says something.  Indeed, the oranges seem to come and come and come for months and months and months, all the oranges I could ever want.  Yet by Thanksgiving there will be none.  The tree doesn’t even look right then.  And in these, the last few days before Thanksgiving, I have only a handful left.

A bit more than ten years ago, my grandmother came to see me.  I always talked to her about the oranges.  She had a garden; I think that made her appreciate the orange tree, and she always wanted to see the tree, to pick and then eat an orange off the tree.  She came only once, and that once was at Thanksgiving, so there were no oranges, only little green things that would one day be an orange.  Yet she was so excited.  She picked the little green oranges because, to her, they were oranges.  I always intended to send her some actual oranges.  I never did.  The tree seemed personal even to her.  Never did she have a conversation with me where she failed to ask me about the oranges.  That visit from my grandmother was when I realized “Thanksgiving” was the end of the oranges, and only then did I ever even think about the little green “new” oranges.

I’m not sure why I took notice of those small green fruits now.  Perhaps it was to remind me of my grandmother.  Perhaps it was to tell me not to take things for granted, something I do with things-good like my orange tree is.  Perhaps it was to remind me that there are seasons even in Los Angeles.  But I think probably it was to calm my fears, to remind me that good things are waiting on the horizon.  Even as I picked that orange, one of the very last of this summer season still hanging on the tree, I was fretting over the lack of oranges left on the tree.  I will miss them this winter.  They quite literally have been food for me this summer and fall.  And then I thought about it.  I looked at the little green tiny fruits and realized in just a few months the oranges will be back.  And I realized the hidden-good applies to more than just oranges.  Sometimes, in the days of winter, in the days when we wait for things, it’s easy to get mired in the darkness of the winter, in the tedium of the waiting.  Most of the time, we cannot see the little, green, newly-formed oranges waiting in the wings.  But they are there.  There is reason to wait.

So for all the things we are waiting for, especially the ones that we can’t see, the ones that don’t appear as little, tiny, green orange-babies, we must trust that they will come.  That’s what I believe.  So to all those waiting for better times, trust that effort will bring them.  To all those waiting for love, trust that it too will come.  And it works even for the luxury items.  The one I’m thinking of – that new Van Halen record, or even bigger, the return of rock ‘n’ roll – could also be on the horizon.  There are little green oranges in the rock world too, new bands, old bands making new songs, young people buying vinyl.  We just need to look for the signs.  I’ve seen them.  They are there, not so much that I can actually describe now, but I’ve seen them.  So as you think about the next rites of winter, the ones involving turkey and wrapping paper, remember everything starts out small, and through the rain and the winter-darkness, is born something that will eventually grow and … turn orange.  Somewhere, there are people named Van Halen and Roth making a new album; others are doing the same, and rock will have its springtime.  I’d like to believe that music’s last 20 years was merely the Winter of Rock, and that, like those new baby oranges, rock’s new season will come.  I believe it’s time; it’s time to come back around.  And that makes me want to toast … to winter —the ultimate season of hope!  So here goes… to winter, to the rain, to the dark nights, to the cold mornings, to those little, baby, green oranges that will … well, turn orange, and to all those men and women working to bring us our summertime rock ‘n’ roll!  It’s around the corner.  We just need to … look for the signs.