There’s a lovely home nearby where I live that sits on an incine. I never pass it without thinking of her. I did not know her but many times, when I’d pass, she would be sitting out on their porch swing, her white hair fairly glistening, all alone. She reminded me of the little old lady in the children’s story book, Babar. How often I wished I’d just stopped and introduced myself. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen her now. I’m quite sure she’s gone. I passed the home today, now repainted, with the white porch swing sitting empty. I miss her.
I’ve thought many times, after reading the journals of one of my favorite authors, how rich everyday observations are. Recently I longed to write but without a theme. Just a stream of what my eyes see and my heart experiences. I sip my hot tomato soup topped with parmesan cheese, pumpkin seeds and plenty of pepper because you can’t have tomato soup without plenty of pepper. The air is warm outside this evening but it’s a kind of warm that the edge of fall brings; like it’s tired of itself.
On the first day of September, my thoughts turn to bread baking; something I used to do every week in the afternoon after a morning of home schooling my children. I love waking up on cool Saturday mornings, putting my hands in flour and kneading dough. Push, fold, fold, push. It sits to rise in my favorite giant bowl; a gift from a long ago Christmas. I turn on the oven and the heat in the room makes the windows fog and foggy windows make coffee taste way better.
The colors of flowers seem more vivid in fall. Purple is my favorite color and I snap a picture as it poses in front of the greens and browns standing behind her. It was a year ago where, each Sunday after church, a group of us went to visit little Roah in the hospital, unsure of where the journey would take her and sure we wanted to be there for her. I would look at the stained glass windows as we sang a song, and whispered to God to please make her well. He did that. I think about other families who now sit in those same chairs and decide that I will go one day and just sit and lay down a heart full of prayers for them. It’s easy to forget when the one you love is not the one who is sick anymore. You want to shake the hospital off like spiders and stay as far away as possible.
The farm equpment on the side of the road signals an at-the-ready for harvest time; the end of something, the beginning of provision. Tractors look more “tractory” this time of year. I glance as I speed past them, thinking it looked like an old insure calendar from my childhood. Much of the gleaning will pile up in barrels and baskets; orange pumpkins, red apples, hay bales for camp fire sitting. I remind myself to get the ingredients for s’mores next time I head to Tennessee.
I drove home alongside the river, the shadows of the trees by the road leaning toward me and casting shadows that seemed to illuminate the white pillow clouds stacking themselves in rows. I find myself humming a song from church yesterday sung in Korean. I think of Chuseok coming soon; a Korean holiday similar to Thanksgiving, that I have come to remember and look forward to. How rich my Korean friends have made my life. I celebrate the harvest twice in one fall and THIS year I will celebrate in England with my daughter! I smiled at the thought of words like Picadilly and scone and I want to drive faster to burn off excitement brewing.
I finished an audio book today; one I’d been listening to for a couple of weeks. She was diagnosed with cancer at 22 and has since gone into remission. She talked about it raw and real, the most terrible days, the small victories. At the very end, now writing from a few years hindsight she said this. “I remember hearing to live each day as your last. I’ve come to think this is terrible advice. It creates a sense of urgency. I think, rather, I’ve earned to live each day as if it were my first. Wake up every day with that sense of wonder and curiosity and joy in the moment that a child might have. Live and love the life you have.”
I’m big on breathing. I have cultivated the ability to notice, to breathe in; to freeze frame a single moment in the middle of it; how my skin feels on a humid morning, the sun hitting something ordinary, the sound of someone’s voice that I know so very well. I hope that September brings you something wonderful.
Beautifully written, I enjoyed the adventure with you.