September is cider, October is pumpkins, November is leaf piles, December is the hearth. Autumn is oven mitts and thimbles and a full library book bin. It is wool blankets and potbelly mugs and cinnamon sticks. It is soulful and hardy and savored and looked forward to all year long.
Do you feel that inner joyful rest culminating as fall rolls in too? In our home, our activities and the position of our hearts shift with the seasons. Spring is giddy. Summer is energetic. Autumn is a gathering in. And winter is rest.
I used to live like continuous summer. There was never a dull moment. But somewhere deep within me was a muffled longing for a rest undefined. My second baby came during a New York winter. From our century-old apartment, my toddler and I watched snow cover the silent streets by night and read picture books on the rug by day. There, stillness found me.
A line in one children’s book aptly described the feeling: “In our winter fields, the soil sleeps.” I soaked in the image of my soul sleeping like a winter field. And I discovered that my soul needs quiet winter and lively summer like my body needs midnight and noon. Every day has an evening, every week has a Sabbath and every year has a winter.
When winter melts into spring, a glad anticipation wells up and bursts open with the daffodils.Then, as spring mounts, we hold summer dreams like a train ticket in our hot hands. Summer is rope swings and crayfish hunting and exploring barefoot then laying lazy in the grass. It’s porch sunset watches and lightning bugs and mossy woods full of tree frog and cicada songs. Summer is long and loud and alive. Before the end, summer outdoes herself in critters and vines. But just before she is overrun and we are overtired, cool winds come bringing grace along with them.
That grace is called fall. It beckons us to wind down and turn inward to gently prepare ourselves for our annual rest. We long for fairy tales and yeasty smells and home fires and cuddling up under weighty blankets with coffee table art books. We cook slower and get out less and read more. It’s a longing fulfilled- quiet, peaceful, restorative.
Over time, I have embraced each season’s mood. The habit has given a beautiful rhythm to our years and a wholeness that I did not know we needed.
This article appeared in the Winnsboro News in 2021.
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