The season is changing. This most golden of summers is relinquishing it’s mesmerizing hold and giving way to Autumn. It’s time.
This Autumn I will hurry less and putter more. Tidying up here, washing up there, setting late blooms in vases, and diffusing bergamot and clove. The to-do list can die its long slow death. I shall do a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
I will nest like the woodland creature I am. I will get the house ready for winter by airing out the rugs, setting about baskets of throw blankets and pillows for cuddling. I will set out books of poetry and art to inspire the imagination as the colors of summer fade to their muted shades. I will clean up the home altars, dusting them, and washing them with last of the Pentecost water, being prepared for more candle and incense burning as the days get shorter.
I will read more and scroll less.The books shall be the cozy variety such as LM Montgomery, Dickens, and Chesterton–the kind of books that reminds one of pipe tobacco and dimly lit libraries. Unless there is a power outage and a full moon, in which case I shall turn to Washington Irving, Poe, or Flannery for just the right dose of spooky or grotesque. I’ll read aloud to the family, without checking my phone.
I will embrace sweaters and shawls and scarves. I will tie my hair up in bandanas and layer my clothes with varying textures and colors. It will not matter if they match. It never has.
I will revisit casseroles and bubbly things that come out of the oven. Sauces rich with red wine and butter. Pot roasts, boeuf bourguignon, and shepherd’s pies. The smells of roasting onions and mushrooms shall be thick in the air, making everyone feel like staying in and chatting about the fire.
I will play more vinyl and cassettes and less spotify. I will get out the hymnals and teach the children to sing the old-timey gospel songs of my childhood. I will ask the big kids to lead us in compline more often.
I will show hospitality with both intentionality and spontaneity, inviting people to come for dinner and imploring people to stay and linger over tea and banana bread even though they just stopped to drop off a book. I will take baskets of muffins to the office and blessed herbs to friends who are under the weather. I choose not to be addicted to perfection. Hospitality is about love and not a performance.
I will send correspondence by postal service. Thank-you notes. Invitations to supper. Handwritten letters. I’ll tuck in a sprig of herbs. Just because I can.
I may smoke a few more cigarettes while sitting under the maple trees with my husband and reminisce about our first date two Autumns ago.
More tea, more cloud watching, more stargazing, more hikes on crunchy leaves.
Yes, life will still include going to work and homeschooling and paying bills. But this Autumn I choose to remember that I get to see another Autumn in all its orange light. I will remember summer, but not long for it. I will prepare for winter, but not fear it.
Welcome September. What treasures will you unfold?
reconciling things 