Category Archives: Seasons + Self

So Long Summer

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You won’t believe it but summer is almost over. I tried pretending for a while that it wasn’t true but I’m afraid it’s so.

The other day I pulled a lawn chair outside under my favorite tree and let the warm summer air dance through my hair.

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I looked up at the canopy of leaves overhead and noticed how very freckled and tired they have become after months under the summer sun.

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I told them not to worry, I’m pretty freckled too from my own time in the sun. Then I saw all the leaves on the ground and realized that a few of them have given up entirely.

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And I thought about being sad but then I remembered that it’s okay—no really it is—because fall is lovely too. And those leaves know the best is yet to come. Soon they’ll all be robed in gold and orange and red and a fantastic show it will be.

As a peace-offering for the end of the season, football will start and we can all feel better about that. There will be pumpkin lattes for everyone and the apples at the orchards will be ready to pick and bring home for lots of yummy, spicy apple things like pie, and bread, and my favorite—apple fritters like my mom used to make.

So don’t you dare be sad—fall will be lovely too :]

Time.

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I have thought a lot about time lately, mostly because it always feels like it’s getting away from me. I’m young and if I get to live a full life, I have plenty of time left. I know that and yet I feel a little panicked every time I look at what day or month it is and wonder how we got here so quickly. Summer, for instance, is over. Um, not okay with me, not that anybody asked but seriously, what the heck? I thought summer just started and all of a sudden everyone I know is posting back-to-school pictures of their kids on Facebook. A little girl I used to babysit put a picture up today of her first day in college…so now I feel old and summer is still over. Awesome.

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I keep thinking its July and then I look at my day planner and realize for the 19th time now that it’s August and that August is fast melting into September. Normally I rush through summer trying to get to fall. I love the cooler weather, the pumpkin lattes, the boots and sweaters. But this year I just can’t get there mentally. I want time to stand still for a moment so I can catch my breath and get my head around it.

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Darren gave me a watch for my birthday last year; I had pointed it out to him in a catalog and then on my birthday he took me to the jewelry counter where the lady working pulled it out and gave it to me all wrapped up and ready for my birthday. I squealed; I do that when I’m happy. I’ve worn that watch a lot this year, especially in Europe when we didn’t have our cell phones to check the time and we were always keeping track of the minutes and the train schedule. I look at it in church when I’m thinking about lunch instead of the sermon and I look at it a lot at work…waiting, waiting for the minutes to tick-tock past five.

It feels strange to me to wear time on my arm like that, to watch the thin little second hand tick along beat by beat as the seconds of my life pass on and on. It feels a little bit like taking my pulse or listening to the beating and rhythm of my heart. Tick tock. Tick tock. It terrifies me, watching my life go by like that.

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Right now time feels like water swirling down the drain and I’m caught and drowning in the waves. I keep wondering what this is all about; why do I feel like time is marching over me instead of tick-tocking along with me? Why am I drowning?

We are busy for sure. This morning on the way to work Darren and I kept listing off things we need to get done. I finally pulled out a notebook and starting writing things down and the list ended up being two pages long. We work all day, we run errands, we eat quickly and late, we try to get a few things done around the house, we watch a little TV and then collapse in bed before we have to get up and do it all again. We run and run but somehow I feel in our haste that I’m running out of time…or at least misusing the time I’ve been given. It nags me, this anxiousness about what I’m doing with what I’ve been given and what I should be doing better instead.

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This post has no resolution really, because I have no answers. These are just my thoughts, my fears, the things I’m working through and trying to get a handle on.

This is time—marching, marching by.

No Pain, No Gain

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I’ve noticed something about myself—a bit of a pattern in the rhythm of my life: Every couple of years I want to burn everything down and start over. I get restless first and crazy shortly thereafter.

I decide I can’t work this job for one more day—or I’ll go crazy. I can’t live in this house for one more day—or I’ll go crazy. I need a baby right now. I have to do this or stop doing that because I NEED a change and can’t go on like this anymore.

I’m at that crazy restless place again. It’s been too many years of the same and I am aching for something different and new.

Usually I get what I want…eventually. I plot and plan, scrimp and save, pester and fuss until the old breaks down and the new is built up around me. And I’m happy—for a while. Life is fresh and new and I’m not bored and restless anymore. I reinvent myself. Find something shiny and new…something different from the monotony of the same.

But right now I am stuck. We have our plans and we know change is around the bend. But that’s the problem…around the bend not right here in my bored little arms. I have to wait. I have to be patient. I have to keep working the job I want to quit. I have to keep living in the house I want to leave. I have to stand still when every fiber of my wild, restless being wants to run away.

There is much learning in the waiting. If I run from what I have, I can never get to what I want. I have to wait patiently through THIS to ever get to THAT.

I’ve been thinking about this restlessness and what it might teach me.  I realize whenever I get uncomfortable in life, I do everything I can to make myself comfortable again.  But I’m starting to wonder if discomfort is actually a very good thing.

After all, if I’m never uncomfortable then what would ever motivate me to move or change? Comfort is nice but it can be very destructive too if it keeps me from ever moving forward. I don’t like feeling wild and restless but this wildness wakes me up and gets me moving.

Not that the whole purpose of life is seeking comfort only. I’m simply saying that discomfort teaches me things comfort never can. Discomfort prods me onward and gives me a catalyst for change.

So I’m trying to value and learn from the wildness inside of me that is always wanting to run away, run on to the next thing. The next thing is probably fine and well—but the waiting and the discomfort—that is fine and well too.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

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“And don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter.

It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.”

{Rumi}

The World is Waking Up

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“i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
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(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

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how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

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(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)”

The poem  i thank you God for most this amazing by e. e. cummings

Listen to the Rain

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Listen to the rain pounding on the glass.

Its rain not snow— we’ve come out of one thing and into another. Winter inches back, spring unfurls in raindrops and daffodils.

The sky is gray today but the clouds water the earth and we are all waking up to new life and new hope. There is blue sky and sunshine behind the clouds of gray. There is green grass and flowers vibrant waiting under the damp sod.

The rain means something; it means we are to the end of one thing and the beginning of another. Spring is falling from heaven in the rain and we are waking up with the sleepy damp earth.

Listen to the rain pounding on the glass. Like the beating of your heart, it means we are alive.

Breathe in the Outside Air

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I need to go outside. I need to breathe in the outside air, feel the sunshine on my skin, the wind on my face. I need to walk in the woods, feel the earth crunch beneath my feet. I need to sit by the ocean, toes buried in sand, salty sea on my lips. I need to climb a tree, feel the rough bark against my skin, see the world from above. I need to hear the birds sing, listen to the leaves rustle with the breeze. I need to smell earth wake up again in blossoms and blooms. I am alive when the earth is alive. I am awake when I’m outside.

Spring is coming, we are almost there. Winter will let go, earth will wake up again. We are almost there.

{Fall} My Personal New Year

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{A hike up Peeked Mountain, Monson Massachusetts 2009}

Yesterday we officially slipped into fall. I love everything about this time of year. I love boots and scarves and warm cozy jackets. I love hot drinks and hardy soups, crackling fires and cobalt skies. I love snuggling up on Sunday afternoons watching football and sipping a hot pumpkin latte every morning on the way to work.

{New Hampshire Pumpkin Fest 2009}

There is something about this time of year that always makes me reflective. The air is cooler, the days are getting shorter, and the whole world feels like it’s wrapping up in a warm, cozy blanket.

{The Height of the Land, Maine 2011}

Every day I notice how many more leaves blush in crimson or show off in gold. I watch them fall to the ground, one by one today, ten by ten tomorrow, and I think about how quickly the warmth and reflection of this season will pass us by. Soon enough we will be watching the snow flakes fall rather than the leaves.

I used to dread the transition from fall into winter. I used to think of winter as the end when everything is dead and over and there is nothing left to enjoy. But after long busy summers, I’ve started looking forward to the quiet days of winter. Instead of thinking of winter as the end, I see it now as a time of rest. The snow I once used to dread is now a welcome reprieve if it means life will slow down and leave us with nowhere to go for a while.

{Maine 2010}

I have learned to love this rhythm of the seasons. The leaves fall and we drift into winter. The snow flakes fly and we gather around warm cracking fires. Soon enough winter melts into spring and new life buds and blooms all around us. We soak up the summer sun until the leaves fall again and the world goes to sleep once more. The ebb and flow of the seasons is the quiet beating of the earth’s heart…tick, tock, tick, tock.

{A warm cozy fire to chase away the chill}

Today I sit by the open window with the cool breeze blowing in. I bid farewell to the hot days of summer and embrace the cool days of fall and winter. I reflect on the year gone by and plan for the year to come. I don’t cry over what we lose with the end of a season; I embrace what we gain with the next…with the ebb and flow of life…with the rhythm of the seasons and the tick tock of the earth spinning round and round through the seasons of life.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

a time to tear, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time to love, and a time to hate;

a time for war, and a time for peace

…

He has made everything beautiful in its time.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 & 11

Walden Pond

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Concord, Massachusetts

Walden Pond

Even the birds are quiet in this quiet place; they sing below their breath, in a whisper, as if showing respect for the beauty of quiet. The wind rustles through the woods, across the water making the trees sigh and yawn with the motion—that is all, the rest is silence. The wind is cold but the trees flirt, taunting the warm air to come—blushing crimson in buds ready to bloom.