Fall with Us

Sometimes fall feels like Autumn. Much-needed change, and much-needed rest. If you like school clothes and sweaters more than shorts and t-shirts, it's the most! wonderful time! of the year! Like another favorite feature of the season, a comfort food recipe, it's equal parts invigorating beginnings and peaceful repose.

And sometimes fall feels like FALL. As in falling, careening, skidding, smouldering, over the finish line of the year's end, never having gotten a handle on some unexpected challenges over the last eleven months. That's us, this year.

This year, we launched our oldest student out of the house, and into the world. New baby chicks joined us in spring, joined each other in the summer, and then joined the pre-existing flock. The human ladies of the house went to Mexico for a month of aventura, Three out of four of the school-goers here made a transition to a new school this year, with one of us being me, returning to college to finish a degree in education. Brisk!

But, on most of these things, the axis tilted away and things started falling.  This year, Henry leaving was not without impact The other kids' roles shifted; we have all been on this curve together, learning how to be the new us.

Then, a family of what can only have been Chupacabras nested under a nearby house and feasted on our young hens relentlessly over Mae's and my month of travel.

 Now, there's one lonely girl, with a whole coop to herself.

Oh yeah, and about this time last year, I woke up, sat up, and then...
                                             just.......
                                                             started.........
                                                                                  tipping over.
Powering through the wooziness, I got up and ready and went to work, where the hallway
seemed.....
                 to........
                             be.........
                                          tilting? Or was that my imagination? This, and other weird symptoms, manifesting over the next 12 months led to, not only many medical visits and tests, and scary suspected causes, but pretty much nothing in the way of actual answers; it made every. other. thing. harder. to. do. And some things? Just impossible.

Changes and unrealized goals. Everywhere, depending on your outlook, there are signs of our failure to preserve the fleeting. A hoop house untended, the lone hen, kids growing up, their pets aging.

Melancholy yet?

Oh good. This is the great thing about fall, or autumn, depending on how it's going for you. The passing over the hill of the year, a time when loss surrounds us, we don't have to pretend that things are growing and full of promise. That's what spring is for.

Notice we don't ask anyone what they're "thankful" for in springtime? Ha! What'd be the point? Everything is awesome when the sun is shining and birds are chirping. How about when the flowers have faded and the winds are howling? This is why, in spite of it being a ritual, enshrining an ethnocentric fairy tale, in spite of having nothing special planned, I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving this year.

 Who wants seconds on small pox?

This year, I'm thankful that we are helping each other as a family, finding our way. That we have a big funny handsome reason to visit Portland, and one free egg a day. And that, as a way to improve my physical health, I have begun to take care of myself as I never have before in my life. That's going to have to do this year. Call it thankfulness or stubborn appreciation, maybe Pollyanna glad-gaming, which is fitting, considering the U.S. Thanksgiving honors a sugar-coated rendering of a tragedy.

When Autumn feels more like Fall, gratitude feels more like reminding yourself that it could be worse, and maybe that's got to be good enough.