The First Cool Mornings

Wait, what was that? I was walking back inside the door near my studio this morning after a search for a few Fall-ish photos to share today, and I thought I saw a glimpse of pink. I stepped back out and nearly squealed with delight.  Sure enough, the first bloom on our giant sasanqua camellia was unfurling and reaching toward the sun just at eye level. I’d already walked by it on two carpool runs this morning, and somehow it escaped my notice. One of my personal signs of fall, and just like the season, it sneaked up on me! 

Spider lilies are blooming out front. So is the goldenrod. The sasanqua is bending with so many buds and fruit. Female cardinals and squirrels are scurrying through the back yard with new fervor. Our nemesis poison oak is even turning its “leaves of three” to signature fall colors. Despite temperatures in the upper 90s last week, we’ve felt the first cool mornings of autumn when the early hours offer a small promise of more pleasant things to come. I even commented to my children on the way to school that “nature knows” in spite of what the thermometer might say.

Fall is my favorite time of year, and since October is my birth month, I often see the coming season as my own personal “new year.” It represents the ending (and beginning) of another year around the sun, and hopes of coolness and coziness tend to turn my attention inward. Both in our home and in my heart.

I’ve been reading recently about harvest festivals in the Celtic wheel of the year — Lughnasad on August 1, Mabon at the Autumnal Equinox, and Samhain on November 1. While I certainly don’t understand all the mythology and traditions associated with these pagan rites, I admire the values centering life around the cycles of nature and the unending movement through time and growth they embody. These particular festivals highlight the ongoing nature of harvesting as it allows us to balance reaping and sowing as a continual process.

In the weeks and months leading up to the Celtic celebration of Samhain and each year’s final harvest, the August and September celebrations embrace pivot points and times of reflection as we experience fruit during the midst of the hardships of continuing to tend the earth. The first and second harvests seem to hold all at once the joy of now and the promise of final harvests to come.

So often our thinking on reaping and sowing takes on the warning tone of hard things coming to roost from misdeeds. But, I think sometimes we overlook the blessed reaping that comes from hard-fought diligence in our lives. In the thick of toiling, it can be hard to let our thoughts rise to that — to embrace the grace of first or second fruits, knowing the harvest isn’t complete.

As I’ve started to reflect on the past year, we are in the center of so many changes. It takes my heart a beat (or more) to catch up sometimes. During this year, I’ve moved both of my parents into care facilities to ensure their health and well-being as we face health needs, loss of memory and aging together. Decisions on how to handle their properties and possessions are daunting. Plus, the emotional toll of sorting and reflecting on the change to my parents abilities brings a particular kind of living grief. 

As I wrote in my last post, we’ve marked a milestone of 10 years as a single-parent family this month and reflected again on how we’ve changed and grown in our experience of my husband’s death. We’re also thinking more acutely about “lasts” this school year as my oldest attends his senior year of high school and prepares for all the excitement and uncertainty of next steps. 

Changing seasons bring such a bittersweet melding of beautiful waning, the call to continued diligence and the anticipation of new things. I’m taking some queues from the Wheel of the Year this fall season as I prepare for my personal “new year.” With change comes the opportunity to reflect on early harvests with gratitude, the fruits we’ve experienced and the joys we’ve embraced. It’s an opportunity to ask, “What serves us well?” And what are we serving? What seeds have been fruitful and which ones are left fallow? How are we spending our time and energy? Is it in fruitful pursuits? How are we tending our soil to ensure it can be adequately prepared for the next season of growth?  

Though this year has been one of challenges and changes, I’m looking forward to a new season of reflection, of continued tending to our hearts and home. I’m eager to look more deeply at my choices of how I spend my time and energy and resources. I’m excited to give myself permission to celebrate the early fruits of wisdom in the midst of some of our sorrows and the blessings of how God has lead us with grace and mercy through those sorrows. I’m longing to take time to simply be this season, to fully experience our moments together. Autumn is coming. I can already see the signs, and the renewed spirit it brings is welcome here.