autumn Archives - Adulting: Second- Half

Fleeting

Good morning! Happy First Day of Fall! I had a little gut punch earlier this week. I walked into the Fresh Market and they had their cinnamon brooms up front. Every year since my daughter was probably in middle school, I would buy her one of those brooms for her room because she loves the smell of them. She would hang it on her ceiling fan and I would whack my head on it, more times than I can count, but I loved that the aromatic broom made her happy. I am not sure that her college roommate would love the strong scent of cinnamon as much as she does, but I’ll have to check in, to see if we should keep the tradition alive.

The Fresh Market also had their pumpkins in full display, right at the store’s entrance. Every year since middle school, my daughter had a tradition with a friend to meet at our home to carve pumpkins before Halloween. They always had elaborate and difficult designs in mind, but at the end of all, the girls usually got giggly and settled for simpler, conventional jack-o-lantern faces, along with good conversation and fancy coffees from Starbucks. This friend of my daughter’s wasn’t in her tightest circle. They never had classes together, and her friend was busy with the swim team, while my daughter was entrenched in the tennis team. Still, they always made time to get together to carve pumpkins, every single year.

Both of these young ladies now go to separate colleges far from each other. The carving tradition will no longer be possible to be kept. My daughter and her friend may see each other in passing, during future holiday outings – those occasional times when kids who went to high school together often reconnect. The friendship has changed, as all relationships do. Still, the memories will remain happy ones, for all of us.

I read an article over the weekend by Pema Chödrön, the proflic writer and Buddhist nun. She says this:

“Realizing the fleeting nature of everything and the freshness of every moment is equivalent to realizing that we’re always in a state of transition, an in-between state . . . Like a shooting star, a visual fault, a candle flame, an illusion, a dewdrop, a water bubble, a dream, lightning, a cloud . . . “

Chödrön teaches the importance of understanding that all phenomena is the same in our lives. Everything that we experience has a beginning, and then immediately starts the continuous process of changing, and at a certain point, will inevitably end. The nature of life is its “fleeting quality.” In other words, “change is the only constant.”

I don’t think that it’s in our human nature to gracefully accept life’s fleeting quality. The things which we love, we don’t want to be fleeting. And the things which we hate, we struggle against, and we resist, and then we try to force the fleeting to go faster. We have so much trouble letting go of control, and just being and experiencing. It’s the dual nature of our analytical minds. It’s the underbelly of being able to think and reason.

Right now, I am enjoying a peaceful morning, my dogs at my feet, as I write this post on my beloved blog. It is a still, calm, sun-filled morning here. I smile to myself, remembering the waft of cinnamon sticks, every past autumn day when I would wander into my daughter’s room. I smile at the memory of the crooked smiles of jolly jack-o-lanterns made by two young ladies who enjoyed each other’s company enough to make a point of inventing this tradition of “crafting” together every Halloween. This morning is well on its way of passing. It’s been a good morning. This morning is in the process of phasing into hopefully, an enjoyable, peaceful afternoon, and then at sunset, the day will draw to its inevitable close. This morning, this afternoon, this whole day will transform into a memory, as all things do. And that is the way of the fleeting nature of life and all things in it. But beautifully, the memories stay alive.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Letting Go Again

“Don’t be sad – Autumn is nature’s way of showing us how beautiful letting go can be.” – James Norbury

I love autumn. I live in Florida. “Summer” is like the rest of the states’ “winter” here in Florida. Summer is the season which most of us Floridians count down the days for it to soon be over. In summer in Florida, you won’t see most of us natives outside, except for the wee hours of the morning, or until it is dark, unless of course, we are floating in a body of water. There’s lots of water here. Yes, I love autumn.

This autumn will punctuate letting go for me, more than perhaps any other autumn in my life. Last Thursday, my once chaotic, full of noise and action, sometimes “bursting apart at the seams” fluffy, homey nest became officially empty, as we watched my youngest two children drive off to their shared university. Sigh. This “letting go” lesson will never go away during our lifetimes, will it? The thing that we most have to let go of in life, is probably the kneejerk reaction to stubbornly revolt against letting go.

“Oh, honey, once you get into your fifties, your “Check Engine” light comes on more and more. Get used to it.” – Theresa, the pulls-no-punches receptionist at my dentist’s office, who pulled strings to get me into the endodontist yesterday. Bless her wise and practical heart.

I had my first root canal yesterday. I was fine with letting go of the nerves of that molar. I feel surprisingly good today. These endodontists seem to have this treatment down to a science these days. The root canal honestly didn’t hurt, and the pain relief is such a blessing. Whenever I experience the intense pain of a toothache, or an earache, etc. I gain new pounds of compassion (see, my extra pounds are just compassion pounds) for people who live with unending pain every single day. I can’t imagine trying to go about your business when your intense pain is constantly screaming at you.

While I was in the waiting room of the endodontist, I got to talking to an older woman who was sitting near to me. She told me not to worry. She’s done fine with all of her root canals. However, what was really tough for this woman is that she had just survived, in her own words, a “heartbreak heart attack.” She suffered a heart attack right after her beloved dog of thirteen years died in her arms. She assured me that “heartbreak heart attacks” are a real thing. She didn’t have to convince me. Those of us who love hard and deep, have vulnerable hearts.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Pause and Ponder

I live in Florida and my friend sent me this meme. Only we Floridians are allowed to share it. Happy Autumn, friends!!! Fall is so many people’s favorite season. The cooler (but not too cold) weather, the beautiful changing leaves (in most parts of the country), the comfy sweaters and sweatshirts, getting back to a little more structure, the pumpkin breads, and pumpkin lattes, and pumpkin pies and pumpkin cookies, basically the pumpkin everythings, wearing boots again, Halloween and Thanksgiving, football, the crispness in the air and the coziness of blankets . . . . . Fall/Autumn (I wonder which name she prefers?), no matter what you want to call this season, it is nothing short of sublime.

It’s not lost on me that I am in the autumn ripeness of my own life. Will I one day look back on my own life and say to myself, “The autumn season of my life was definitely my favorite.”? I don’t know. I do feel a deep richness in this stage of my life, like no other. I have shed a lot of things that no longer serve me, much like a tree sheds its leaves, and yet I still feel rooted and solid. I am experiencing the bounty of everything which I have worked towards creating in life. My family has grown up nicely and still remains quite close at heart. My relationships have matured and deepened. My writing fulfills my need for purpose. My spirituality feels naturally a part of my every day experience, like never before. I wonder if with each season, we get closer to God? Perhaps it is in that little sliver of eternity, within the holy meridian that divides winter from the start of spring – perhaps that is when we are One with God completely? Is this perhaps, what is meant by the circle of life? That’s what I like about this autumnal time in my life. I have the time and the energy and the physical health, in order to be able to ponder these ideas and many other things. Autumn gives us time to pause and to ponder. What a beautiful, glorious, colorful gift!!

The Little Things

So yesterday, I walked along the side of my house (which is something that I rarely do). My next door neighbor’s older relative was splashing around in their pool.

“I just couldn’t resist this fabulousness!” she said with a wide, wide grin on her lovely face.

I pondered on the fact that I can’t remember the last time that I have swum in our own pool. Not everyone has the ability to swim outside in late October and sadly, I have long lost sight of that fact. It was interesting to me that it was our neighbor’s relative who was swimming. Our neighbors, like us, are from the North and I remember when they first moved here, they swam all of the time, day and night. It reminded me of when we first moved to Florida. The novelty of having a pool in your own backyard that could be used year round, was such a joy! Such an amazement! Then the exciting novelty wore off, for all of us, except for our Labrador retriever.

When I took the dogs out the other day, as part of our regular routine, my Collie, laid down in the grass, firmly and stubbornly. She kept her long, regal nose up in the air, just daring me to tell her to come in. I acquiesced. I sat down beside her and before long, I had buried my own nose into her warm, beautiful, sweet-smelling, sun-baked fur. It was one of my favorite moments of the week, so far.

My friend texted pictures of the beautiful autumn leaves at a waterfall site outside of a small town in Georgia, where she is visiting. They were beautiful pictures. I miss experiencing the gorgeous changing leaves of fall, yet when I lived up North, I think I grumbled more about raking the leaves, then savoring the awe-striking colors. I think that I may have taken the Northern autumns for granted sometimes.

There is so much to savor in every day, that we sometimes take so much for granted. Sometimes, we don’t miss a lot of these simple joys, until they are gone, I suppose.

I met with one of the girls who I mentor, yesterday. She was talking about visiting her family’s lovely farm in Columbia, a while ago. She talked about the gorgeous, stately horses and the dogs of many sizes and colors, and the orange juice drinking chickens. She talked on and on, with a sparkle in her eyes and excitement in her voice. She talked about picking vividly colored guavas from the trees and how amazing that they tasted. She has never had better juice, than the guava juice they made from those trees.

“When will you go back?” I asked her.

“I can’t. They sold the farm for money and they now live in a small apartment in the city.” She and I agreed that she had been so lucky to experience visiting the farm before they sold it. We agreed that memories stay with us forever, and that she was so smart to savor her moments, delighting in the farm experience.

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” – Aldous Huxley

It is Fall

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” – Albert Camus

“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.” – John Donne

Today is the first full day of fall. I love this season. I know so many people who say that autumn is their favorite season. I live in Florida, but I grew up in Pennsylvania and I went to college in Virginia. Both of those states admittedly have much prettier fall leaves than what we get in Florida. Still, even Florida has its change of seasons. My house has a lake behind it and behind that is a nature preserve. In the fall, the light of the sun is finally able to poke through the preserve’s thick wall of trees and brush, hinting at the light that lives inside all of existence. The Japanese people call this beautiful sight of “sunshine filtering through leaves”, komorebi. I’m surprised that we English speakers don’t have just one word for that phenomenon because it is so lovely to behold.

“I love autumn, the season of the year that God seemed to have just put there for the beauty of it.” – Lee Maynard

When my son was on a travel soccer team trip a few years ago, we headed up north for a soccer tournament and one of the mothers, a native Floridian asked me timidly if I thought that it would be okay for her to bring back some colored leaves. I said, “Honey, they will give you as many Hefty bags as you want.” I remember the hours spent raking up the beautiful leaves in all of their splendor. I remember all of the different school assignments and crafts involving the lovely leaves. For some reason, those chores and assignments never seemed as agonizing as picking up fallen apples covered in bees in the summer or shoveling snow in the winter. There is just something so comforting in all things relating to fall. The gorgeous colored leaves, pumpkins, pumpkin spice, Halloween and Thanksgiving, swirling light winds, back to school, the start of football season, light sweaters and throws, etc. are all things of autumn and things that are almost universally appreciated.

“Autumn is the mellow season and what we lose in flowers, we more than gain in fruits.” – Samuel Butler

Second Halfers, we are autumn. We have gone through the spring of our childhoods and the summer of becoming an adult. We are in our full-color prime, bearing the fruits of who we really are and showing the world the beauty of the banquet of what we have to give. We are calmer than in our previous seasons. Our colors don’t necessarily burst, but our colors are vivid and show all that we have lived through and experienced, making our season’s colors the most beautiful of all – the colors that all of the world celebrates. How blessed we are to be in this lovely season of our lives!

“Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature has been saving all year for the grand finale.” – Lauren Destefano