When October goes

I love waking up to morning chill cozy under a pile of blankets. I love crisp autumn light, puffy white clouds in a sparkling blue sky, and vibrant changing-leaves brilliance all around. I love shoulder season vacations when the weather is more temperate and the destinations less traveled. I love just-picked apples, soft pumpkin cookies, silky hot chocolate, and cider-infused roasted chicken. I even love the ruckus of a flock of geese heading south. And I especially love the serenity of tumbling waves on an unpopulated beach walk.

Autumn is a delightful time of change and celebration – exploding color and abundant harvest. When I see a jack-o-lantern at the end of the season, totally wrung out and collapsed, it evokes amusement, not mourning. I see how that carved face has given its all to lighting a path and bringing smiles to passers-by; how it has gallantly weathered the late summer heat, the transitional rainstorms, and the early frosts. When the leaves start to turn and fall, it’s a revelry, not a demise. I consider the gold and maple canopy as a fitting culmination of months of absorbing sun and rain and hanging on through wind and storm. Fall is the occasion for the trees to put on their fanciest dress-up outfits.

It occurs to me that life, too, has its seasons, and I am in the autumn of mine. Before I move into my time of wintering, I will take cues from those spent pumpkins and leaves dancing in the breeze. I want my autumn to be a time of ripening into my best self, giving all I’ve got, showing off my colors, and living out loud.

This essay was read at Art in the AM, a program of the Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild. It was written in response to “Expired” (copyrighted) by Howard Eberle, and an uncropped version of the watercolor is below.