Blessings
“The
leaves fall patiently.
Nothing
remembers or grieves.
The River
takes to the sea,
the yellow
drift of leaves.”
Sara
Teasdale
Autumn has finally
arrived here in Alabama. Cool mornings and warm afternoons are a
blessed break after a long summer of hellish heat. We won't have
beautiful fall colors this year—too dry. But no one complains
because of gratitude for the chill in the air. For the first time in
my life, I saw a forest fire on the drive up to North Carolina last
week; just over the Georgia line, near Rising Fawn. And a grass fire
on the way to Leeds the week before. The earth is dry, dry, dry here.
Seasons---we all have them, don't we?
I attended a wedding over
the weekend. The daughter of a good friend and her handsome beau. It
was, as with all weddings, lovely, sweet, complicated. Both sets of
divorced parents listened while their children vowed to love, honor,
and cherish each other until death parts them. That's a season in itself, isn't
it? I sat at the bountiful reception, drinking champagne and munching on crackers with humus
and blue cheese, and couldn't hear one word of the conversations
going on around me because the music was so loud. Did I like loud
music as a young person? Probably. That's a season, most definitely.
Afterward, my voice was hoarse from having yelled so much. And I have
to say, being an old woman at a wedding filled with robust young
people, I experienced myself as crone for the first time. I thought
of all the fairy tales in which the crones bring either blessings or
curses to the wedding. Most of them bring blessings, but there's
always that one outlier, who brings a poison spindle or some such.
Hope I'm a blessing crone.
I've come to appreciate
the seasons of life. I don't worry about wrinkles, or drooping
body-parts. There's a freedom in being at an age when being pretty
is not the priority. I love the young people I know; the way they
think, the way they live and the things that are important to them. I
want to hear their thoughts and bask in their energy, but I don't
want to be them. We have seasons for a reason.
I'm participating in an
art show in a couple of weeks—November 5th. This will be
my very first time to show my “art” though I think of what I do
as “craft.” This is a new season, a spring of sorts for me. I'll
let you know how it goes. We've all got a few springs in us, whether
we're young or old, and we've got a few winters, too. I hope you find
the spring in yourself on this autumn day—ice thawing, rivers
running, the world coming alive. I send you a crone's blessings.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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