Seasons Change

There's nothing like a trip to the country to make you aware of the changing of seasons. In the city, it is often just about temperature and store decorations. In the country, changing leaves and chilly nights remind you that summer really has given way to fall.

While I am not that much of a summer person, the transition to autumn has always been a melancholy time for me. I might prefer both the clothes and the temperatures of fall, but the earlier hours of darkness and the resumption of responsibilities that were eased over the summer tend to make me a little rocky. Not destroyed, just rocky.

Today, however, as we drove on country roads lined with gloriously red and orange trees, as we ate some of the fruits and vegetables I'd picked myself, and as we said goodbye to the last of our summer activities, I found that though I felt the change of season, I felt it in a hopeful way, rather than in a melancholy one. Perhaps that's a by-product of a few years during which "seasons" in my life have seemed to change way more often than every few months. When nothing is really a given any more, the only real given is change. And it's a whole lot easier to handle change when you handle it hopefully.

I am sure there will still be days when the evening cold or the 4:30 dark will leave me feeling a little gray. But there have been gray days in every season, and uncertainties about what each "next season" will hold, and I have survived. And if I can do that, I might as well just enjoy the changing leaves, and get ready for the next change of season.