Geese flying south and other big events

The geese are flying south.
I remember growing up, standing in the field behind our house, the browning grass around my knees, head back, watching the slightly imperfect V as the geese honked their way toward warmer climes. It wouldn't be too much longer that it'd be winter--just past trick-or-treat, and then get ready for sledding on snow days and snowball fights on the glorious mountain of snow where the plows piled it up in the neighborhood cul-de-sac just in front of McFadden's house and that of grouchy Mr. Rice. When the geese flew south, once or twice, as I remember, dad even took us out to Horicon Marsh--just over an hour from where I grew up in a blue-collar Milwaukee suburb--to see flocks, no, swarms of geese, blackening the sky, their raucous greetings or alarms or songs or laughter or whatever their honks are, creating such a giddy, overwhelming cacophony that I, too, couldn't help but giggle.
Now, forty years later, it's not the same.
I mean, the geese still go south, but it doesn't portend the same things, no trick-or-treating, and the snow means trouble for my rear-wheel-drive car. Even as a teacher, the snow days are filled with the minutiae of correcting papers or fixing something around the house. And, without getting too maudlin, in the big scheme of things, I, too, am closer to the fall than I am to the spring.
To be honest, though, it's been a hell of a summer. And fall really is a beautiful time. And the promise of the warmer climes is just around the corner. So maybe it's not so bad after all...
The geese are flying south.