The summer came with so much promise and we were ready to embrace everyone and everything. Those lovely friend smiles, smiles from people on the street, smiles of strangers, they were all revealed.  I began to write about that feeling of joy and before I could finish my story the mood changed.  Caution returned, distancing from people we love and a weird crack in our life that left some people on the other side. 

Today the rain finally came and the water has highlighted the changing leaves.  Whole branches are golden in the late afternoon light.  Fall is heartbreakingly beautiful. The colors although brilliant are at the same time somber.  I always feel a bit of melancholy, tinged with relief.  Summer pushes us to go and fall says stay calm, float like a leaf, it’s ok to fade, even wither a bit because it isn’t forever.  I’m not ready to be dormant just a bit slower. 

We plant trees knowing they will shade our children, we pile rocks so water won’t etch our path, we rake leaves so small shoots can grow next spring.  These rituals of fall are labors that make us feel safe, and that are gifts to the future.  It is the warmth of summer that we hold inside and it gets muffled, but it will burst out again and the beauty is that deep down we know it.

“So you mustn’t be frightened, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.”  Rainer Maria Rilke