Fall Things

Seasons have feelings. Specific feelings.  Fall air is specific. The landscape is specific. The mornings are their own kind of miraculous. And the crackling warmth of fall evenings is its own kind of beautiful cocoon.

With the bliss of fall in sight, September brought along a lot of space for solitude and alone time. And intimate relationship misunderstandings and internal struggles. Seemed personal work came with more steps backwards than forward. But we press. On.

The between before the shift. The sort of unavoidable chaos before the calm. The interruption of self and your world before you arrive there. “There” being the very specific feeling I have asked my life for. I stepped away from a job in pursuit of this very specific feeling. My bank account reflects all the therapy had in pursuit of this specific feeling and this very specific life.

And here is life starting to whisper its response. Yes and a little more yes.

But not before trauma and the idea of good things meeting a bad thing has its say. The brain wants to lean into this particular kind of ying and yang.

Almost ten years ago my father and his best friend drowned in a boating accident. A day before he was set to pick up the baby brother who had just completed his first year of graduate school at NYU. Two weeks before the middle brother's wedding ceremony. Dad called a few days before the accident. The excitement in his voice around us gathering in Hilton Head to celebrate JR and P, palpable. His suit arrived on the front porch three days before his funeral. It took us two days to open that box. Only to close another the next day.

Many good things are starting to happen all at once. But Too many good things happening all at once is a trigger.

Seasons have feelings. Specific feelings.