March

It was one of those March days

When the sun shines bright

and the wind blows cold:

When it is summer in the light,

and winter in the shade.

Charles Dickens from “Great Expectations”

Stepping Stones

My journal is filled with disconnected ideas, weather conditions, and random thoughts.  Days and dates, and months of the year quickly pass by.   Yesterday marked the first day of Spring, an annual milestone, filled with new hopes and dreams, like a toddler taking their first steps across the room. 

I don’t remember learning to walk, but will never forget when I learned to ride bike.   One day, a small bicycle suddenly appeared in the yard, and I knew what to do.  It wasn’t mine.  It was borrowed, and I would teach myself to ride.  No eyes watched me, and no one talked.  No training wheels attached themselves to the frame, either.  It was hop on and go, from the top of a small embankment of the lawn, down.  The incline was slight, and the soft, fluffy grass protected me when I fell.  The time  spent balancing became greater than time on the ground, until finally I was sailing away.  It only took a day, or two.  Left to my imagination,  in this crucial task of growing up,  the  way to build and sustain my fragile confidence, was to be left alone, to own the accomplishment for myself.  

It just occurred to me that the photograph I took of the stepping stones, leading from the forest into the open field, can be a metaphor for every task I embark upon, in every new stage of life, like riding the bike.  And now, as each page of the calendar gets turned, and every new season passes by, the uncertainty remains as powerful as before.  But, to move along means to cross the stepping stones at every  juncture, and make the most, of tous les jours.   

Images from Home

The seasons converge in Autumn; Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. September, October, November and December come together. Snow, sunshine, birth and death happen. The wind blows, or doesn’t blow, and what we know for sure is that which we don’t know, in the face of uncertainty. We feel sadness, happiness, hope and despair. One is irrelevant, without the other.

The Wine Month

The Saxons called October Wyn-Monath, or Wine Month.

Ancient Germans called October, Winter fyleth 

In honor of the full moon.  

In 2020 the golden colors of the Wine Month

leave me feeling drunk.

In my stupor I dream of snowy days

And white snowflakes tumbling down from the sky.

New England Aster in October

On the trail flowers and ferns testify to the delicate balance of nature throughout the seasons. A wild flower may appear along the path by itself, or you might find it flourishing in bunches. The lone flower may not return the next year, allowing only one chance to appreciate it in the moment.

In the photo you will see a New England Aster. Its deep purple color stands out against the reds and browns of the October landscape.

New Clothes and Old Clothes

“New Clothes and Old Clothes” from “The New Book of Days” by Eleanor Farjeon, captures the way I feel about old clothes. There are some pieces of clothing I really love and can’t part with. I may or may not wear them, but keep them for their colors, the feel of the fabric, or some memory attached to an event or time. It may be something I wore over and over again – the threads so bare, the collar so frayed.  The intangibility of the passing of that time is what matters most to me.

Eleanor says, “In May, older clothes are kinder to you then new ones.”

I rather like New Clothes,

They make me feel so fine,

Yet, I am not quite Me,

The clothes are not quite mine.

I really love Old Clothes,

They make me feel so free,

I know that they are mine,

For I feel just like Me.