Slow Down!

Living, for the past 2 1/2 years, in a clime that has an actual fall - one with cooler mornings and cool afternoons, peppered with days of Indian summer, that's stretched leisurely out across a few months- has made me come to love fall, to anticipate it, to wait for it.  I admit to spending just a little too much of the summer waiting for the cooler, quieter, shorter days of fall.  Instead of relishing the long days of warmth and ease and less clothes, I found I couldn't wait - those last days of summer - for cooler, drier days, days when it was OK to stay at home just a little bit more (you would never know I have something like 18 country stamps in my passport, the homebody I've become), days when the sun retired just a little earlier in the evening, bringing all my chicks inside where it was warm and cozy and just us.

Our Fall in Pictures

From First Day of School...

To the pumpkin patch...

But even as school started, and a few weeks later, the leaves started to change color, I knew it would be a fast slide through my favorite time of year into winter, Christmas, and the new year and I felt a little sad - I wished there was a way to put this time of year - this time of life, even - on hold for just a little bit.  It is a good time.  We've all adjusted to the big changes of the year.  Graham and I have settled into a daily routine - he naps and eats with a general regularity and I've found a balance between staying at home and venturing out that has cured the extreme loneliness I felt earlier this year, without leaving me exhausted at day's end.  Gideon is flourishing in school and I've adjusted to his absence with little difficulty or sadness - it feels like the natural next step has happened now.  Jeremy's work days are more predictable, with more Saturdays at home - and even when he's not here as expected, we all manage to survive anyway.

To JSF ITF Family Day at PAX River NAS (have some acronyms, won't you?)...

And - as I knew it would happen - here we are staring December square in the face.  A December that will mark my oldest son's sixth birthday and my youngest's first.  And I want to put everything on hold.  I've pulled down the fall/Halloween/Thanksgiving decorations, but feel extremely resistant to jumping right into the Christmas season.  I like for everything to have its "season...under the heavens."  

Why must we jump straight from Thanksgiving into Christmas (or, even worse, straight from Halloween into Christmas)?  Why can't we have a lull right now, where we're just enjoying a few days of nothing special, nothing big?  Why do we want to rush into the biggest holiday season of the year and fill it so full we're crazy by the end of it?  Why can't we just pause here - and be silent, be still?  Just be.  It's the time of year for that kind of reflection and introspection.  For moving slow.  Being deliberate.

To backyard family photo shoot...

Or, better yet, why can't we take whatever it is about the Christmas holidays that make us all so crazy to rush to them - the wonder, the coziness, the generosity, the family time, the cheer, the feeling of camaraderie, the complete and total love of God - and spread that out during the entirety of the year?  Why can't we live in a spirit of wonder and generosity, of oneness with all our fellow humans on this planet year-round, experiencing the world like a 5-year-old and infant - where all is still new and wonderful all the time?

To Halloween...

To Thanksgiving weekend.

Because this wondrous season, too, will be gone and we'll be sitting in a cold, quiet January before we know it.  I just don't want it to pass so quickly, so full of activities that I haven't actually breathed in the smell of pine and wood-burning stoves, and the crispness of the fall-almost-winter air.  So, for now, I resist the omnipresent pull to rush headlong into the Season.  I can't, just yet, even bring myself to start the Season.  I just want to sit a little while longer with my 5-year-old and not-quite-one-year old and be.  Pretending for just a little longer that it will be like this forever.

Happy In-Between.  Merry Everyday.