This time of year, when the clouds cover the sky and the nights come all too soon, it can feel as if all the color has drained from the world. The summer song of the trees has given way to their clattering in the cold wind. At your feet, only faded, fallen leaves remain. The brush that surrounds you is gray and tangled with burrs and knife-edged thorns. Even the pond is dull, its inhabitants and visitors asleep now or gone.
But if you follow the path and keep climbing, wound around the trees to the east you’ll come across a patch of bittersweet vines, their berries looking like lanterns gleaming through the gloom. The old timers say there’s a legend that if you gaze at them and listen for what they have to say they will tell you secrets that fill you with understanding. “Give it a try,” they say. “Those lanterns don’t grow here for nothing. It could be that they’re meant for you.”
I must have been about three when I dressed myself all by myself for the very first time. It was early in the morning and I listened at my bedroom door for my Dad to get his coffee. Once he did, I bounded into the kitchen, struck a pose, and yelled, “Look! I got dressed!”
I was greeted with laughter and applause, and my mother made an extra piece of cinnamon toast for me in celebration.
I thought about that as I sprinkled cinnamon on my oatmeal yesterday morning. Isn’t it interesting, I thought, how many memories are liked together by our sense of smell? I make “old-fashioned” oatmeal, by the way, not the instant kind. It has a hardier texture and keeps you fueled for a long time. I add raisins to mine while it’s cooking, and sometimes chunks of apple. And, because my great-grandmother served it that way, I top it with a pat of real butter, a sprinkle of dark brown sugar, and a small dollop of plain yogurt or kefir.
But I didn’t mean to talk about oatmeal. I wanted to share the joy my three-year-old self felt at her landmark accomplishment. She felt so capable and proud, so “all grown up.”
As I said in last week’s letter, I believe it’s good to celebrate yourself every now and then. When you get the hang of a new skill, or when you passed a test or completed a task even though you were tired and wanted to quit, celebrate it. Pat yourself on the back. Put on a smile and say “Good job!” Revel in your pleasure and satisfaction. Share it if you like—not in a boastful or arrogant way, but simply to spread your joy. Or keep quiet, and let what you’ve done speak for itself. But be glad about it, either way.
The holidays are barreling down on us now, and love ‘em or hate ‘em, they put pressure on us all to live up to some ideal, to be happy no matter what. They come heaped with memories, both merry and sad, contented or mad, with traditions and stories we embrace or reject. Some of us are compelled to gather with family and friends. Some of us are compelled to be alone. But for all of us, even those of us who pretend that “it’s just another day,” the holidays pull us out of the ordinary and create little flurries of stress. And each of us does the best we can in the midst of it all, and I want to say that doing your best, even when it falls short of your hopes and expectations, is reason enough to say, “Well done.”
I hope that as you prepare for the days ahead you will pause from time to time to take stock of your accomplishments, both the little ones and the spectacular, and to celebrate them. Celebrate how you met the challenges and came out on the other side, and you’re still you, only stronger somehow, and better.
Personally, I’ll be launching the holiday season by taking next Sunday off. If you get lonesome for me, you can always pop in here. I leave pieces of myself almost every day.
I’ll have a new Sunday Letter for you again in December. You bring the coffee. I’ll bring cinnamon toast. And we’ll just celebrate together.
This must be what it’s like to be an ant, tall pillars rising all around you, the hilly ground with its pebbles and twigs beneath your feet as you walk in silence, one attentive step after another.
I suppose ants don’t see the bright spray of red leaves caught in the pine’s boughs like some Christmas decoration. Their world differs so much from mine, although we are a part of each other’s, inextricably.
Do the pines know that leaves dance in their arms? Some part of me believes they do, that they know vast swaths of the world beyond my own perception. They are old, after all, having lived on this earth twice as long as I have. They have risen high above the earth that holds their sprawling roots. They commune with sky and wind and birds and know the seasons. They listen to the stars.
When I walk among them, awe fills me, and wonder. I touch their rugged bark and breathe their fragrance. I see their fallen cones and the stems of the cones left after the squirrels have pulled off their scales to feast on the hidden nuts. I laugh at the heaps of them piled between the roots of the trees. The squirrels here, I see, are well nourished. And as I walk here, so am I.
Every morning, as soon as I leave my bed, I open the drapes of the studio window as if I’m pulling back the curtains on a play’s opening scene. Today, the view surprises me with snow-powdered leaves and logs on the slope of the western hill. A flurry of flakes dashes by. I don’t take it as an omen. It’s what it is and I celebrate it for that and consider it a gift, regardless of its mood. Thus it begins, I say to myself, feeling blessed that I am seeing it, and that this is what I see. And I turn and go about my day. But this morning, before my eyes leave the scene, a buck emerges from the upper woods and walks down the hill, his rack held high, stopping before he gets to the road to listen and to watch. He waits. An oil truck passes. Then he walks across the road and bounds down to the field where apple trees and a sleeping doe wait. Thus it begins, I think to myself. I notice that I am smiling.
I hadn’t been to this section of the creek in a long time, maybe not since the autumn of last year. Today I came here on a whim, wanting a new perspective, not of the creek, although I would welcome that, too. No, it was something larger, and deeper, I sought, something to dispel the wistful melancholy that wrapped me like some dim veil. It happens every fall. The year, after all, is coming to its end, all it held rushing away.
The blast of cold air that struck me as I emerged from my warm car woke me, Startled I breathed it in, I took in the whole scene with a sweep of my eyes. The pines, the hill with its bare trees and the fallen leaves spilling down to the rocky creek, and the creek itself, singing in the cold. I didn’t name things. I tasted and smelled them and felt them on my skin and heard their silence and sounds. I saw the motion of it all, the constant change, all choreographed. And how perfect the light!
I walked along the creek for a while, noticing the details, noticing that my face wore a smile and my eyes felt alive, as if they had awakened just now from some deep sleep. And so they had.
Yesterday’s taste of snow is nowhere in sight. Only its cold remains, and its clouds, riding the wind. At the field’s edge a row of weathered goldenrod bobs like the old men who gather for coffee and gossip at the town’s cafe at seven o’clock every morning.
Did you hear about Elmer and the row he got into? You can’t really blame him, though. That’s right. I would have done the same thing myself–or worse!
They tell their rambling stories and haul out old jokes, and laughter dances with their clanking spoons, and then, for a moment they grow still, memories floating behind their lowered eyes, They lick sticky glaze from their fingers and drips of coffee from the sides of their cups. Then one of them says the keyword from the joke that had them laughing before, and they start all over again, nodding and remembering the days when they were still golden, and content in the gold of the now,
Despite the sliver of cowardice and dread that pokes up from my memory of snow’s dangers and cold, the child in me wins out. “Look!” she shouts, all excited and glad, “It’s snowing!” She tells me what to do.
You zip up your jacket and tie the hood, and pull on your boots and your mittens. See? Then you just dash out the door. You hold up your arms, throw back your head, stick out your tongue and taste the cold. Then you twirl and twirl and dance. You just twirl and twirl and dance.
I suppose it was because the week was warm and we were all pretending summer was still here. Whatever it was, the wetlands shocked me. Reeds that were green mere days ago were as white as the bare limbs of the sycamores. The pond was all but gone, revealing the seaweed that soon would turn cranberry red, just in time for the coming holidays. The water fowl and blackbirds were gone now, and the crickets and frogs. But above the rise behind the pond, a freight train rumbled past, providing sound to break the silence.
The seasons pass so swiftly. Just yesterday you were still here, smiling into my eyes, saying I love you as you said goodbye. And now, you, too, are gone. At least from my sight. In my heart, you are here, every bit as tangible as summer’s song, and like summer, forever warm and welcome, and shining with light.
Thick, low clouds covered the sky as I drove about on some errands. Now and then, tiny snowflakes darted through the air, melting as quickly as they had appeared. Overnight, the world had turned cold and gray. Definitely. I murmured, it’s November. But then, as I turned into the plaza, a splash of color caught my eye. Roses! I could hardly believe it. I parked and walked over to them, touching one finger to a delicate petal and bending to inhale the scent. For a moment, all the darkness disappeared, and I was warmed as if by a lover’s kiss. Sometimes the world says Yes.
I watched the raindrops slide down the window, tiny reflections of the world upside down in each of them. They seemed a perfect analogy for current events, both globally and in my personal life. Beyond them, a blanket of burnt sienna oak leaves, wet with rain, lent a dash of welcome color to the dreary scene.
Fallen leaves played a big part in my life this past week. I shuffled through deep heaps of them at the park, thoughts of friends drifting through my mind. I dug them from the gutters on my house and swept a couple stray ones from my entry floor. I laughed at two fat squirrels digging through them for acorns and heard them rustle as two deer, a buck and a doe, lunged up the south hill as I opened my back door.
The week had been a warm one, probably the last, and I took advantage of it. I set up the saw buck my friend Bob made for me a couple years ago, got out my chain saw, and cut up the fallen tree limbs and branches I’d dragged down the hill the week before. I had about a quarter cord of firewood when I finished, all neatly stacked and covered. I laughed as I thought about what fun that was, and about how glad and grateful I was that I could tackle such things at my age. It’s a good thing, I believe, to celebrate yourself every now and then.
The tapping of the raindrops on my window pane lured me back to them and to the dull, gray light outside, and I found myself recalling other, sadder events that had colored my recent days. A beloved Uncle had passed away, and a remarkable woman who had been my best friend all through high school. Then I learned of the death of the daughter of an acquaintance I’ve known for some time. She was in a class with my son once. And the anniversary of my son’s death is tomorrow. Somewhere in between came the birthday of a cherished friend who died last year and I missed making her favorite coconut cake for her, a long-standing tradition.
I was glad for the rain, for the softness it provided, for the way it told me that sometimes the world seems upside down and all you can do is watch the tears slide down and notice the colors beyond them. In the end, it all balances out. As one of my friends often says, “Life goes on.” Sometimes it rains. And sometime there are golden days that make all the rest of them worth it.
Wishing you a few of the golden ones in the week ahead.
