Over the past two or three weeks, summer has silently faded into fall. At first, the only sign was the return of football season, which has led to quiet Saturdays in front of the TV and my son requesting a shirt with a football on it as his required daily uniform.
Soon, the referee whistles were joined by pots of boiling water and the quiet, steady sound of my mother-in-law's hands moving three times as fast as mine as we preserved our way through two and a half bushels of pears, which equated to a freezer full of fruit squeezies and jam, bags of fruit leather lining my pantry, and more than two dozen jars of canned pears that I see as insurance against scurvy this winter, since pears are the only fruit my daughter willingly consumes.
Gradually, shorts fall to the bottom of the dresser piles as sweaters and jeans find their way to the tops. The lawn turns greener and stops needing daily watering. The leaves on the trees start to debut their autumn wardrobes, the neighborhood grows quieter between the hours of 8 am and 3 pm, and the air conditioning only runs for a few minutes each afternoon. The sun sets earlier and bedtime is scooted up five minutes each day until we find our way back to that bewitching 7:00 bedtime and not-so-magical 6:30 am wake up call that sounds an awful lot like a dinosaur coming from my son's bedroom.
Life slows, life grows, life falls into a predictable pattern.
I find myself smiling while watching the rain blow leaves all over my neighbor's yards. I stand at the window with my children, counting the seconds between lightning and thunder and reflecting on the past nine months, contemplating the months to come. Outside, storms rage. Inside, there is a calm peace.
Autumn is a closing time, a changing time. In spring everything is new, in summer everything is fast, heated, blinding. But as September turns to October, I am left to remember everything I haven't done and all of the ways I fall short. My days are full of "I can'ts" and "I wish I coulds" and an overwhelming desire to hibernate. I am reminded that I am not like other women, that I have limits, and that sometimes, my idea of how I would like my day to go is thrown out the window at 7:30 am.
I am learning patience. I am learning to let things fall by the wayside, to not compare my dry evergreen pine needles to another woman's aspen gold or red maple. We are all made differently for a reason. The canyons are at their most beautiful when every individual tree focuses on putting on its peak colors--some deep red, some vibrant yellow, some bright green, some burnt orange, and even for some, the dull browns that provide contrast and are important in their own right.
We all have our season to shine, and our season to sleep. There will be times in my life that I can run at full speed--times when I will find the time and energy to exercise my body and my children's brains, times when I can act on every thoughtful service that comes to mind. There will be times when I have to slow down, take the day an hour at a time, do what I can and forgive myself for what I can't accomplish.
Fall teaches me that we all need time to reset, that this winter will give me time to rest, and that the hope of spring will breathe new life into this weary soul.
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