LITTLE ROCK — A recent Sunday was a clear, lovely, unusually warm autumn day. The colors of the season were present, but full brilliance was about two weeks away.
The next day, winter threatened, lashing the trees with frigid rain and harsh winds as if to rip away the leaves before they reached their glory. When the storm passed, cautious optimism said autumn held winter off, but at a cost.
That night my daughter tentatively asked if we could turn the heat on - please? Reluctantly, I agreed.
It's not that I wasn't cold or that I wanted anyone else to be. It wasn't about my "no heat in the house until everyone is wearing sweaters" rule. We were all wearing sweaters and hoodies that night. It was that the arrival of weather cold enough to require indoor heat suggests an early winter and that means less autumn.
To stay happy through winter, I need as much autumn as I can get. Fall is my favorite time of year and my best time of year. Something about the combination of crisp weather, vibrant colors, and gathering-in energy suits me. My most creative thinking and my biggest personal shifts occur during fall.
The special essence of autumn is deepening, uplifting and calming all at the same time. Life has to throw a whole lot at us before we lose sight of brilliant orange leaves dancing against an exquisitely blue sky. Taken in purposefully, that image can carry us through all the gray tones of winter.
We need these seasonal anchors, especially as we get older. The rituals of fall are grounding for us and for ourfamilies. Fall is more than transition to winter, it's about appreciation, about harvest in every sense. A good autumn, with lots of outdoor time and the clear thinking that goes along with it, sets the tone for a deeply reflective, contented winter.
The older I get, the more I perceive the power of the seasons to ease us through our maturing. Our metaphoric connection to them goes beyond the obvious pattern of our own aging. It reaches into our ability to process all that happens to us in each annual cycle - the joys and the losses, self-awareness and understanding of others, growth in career and creative endeavors, relationships and the power of community.
As we get older, the emotional impact of the seasons increases with reminders of our place in nature. No matter how advanced our technology, we're helpless in the face of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts.When this truth comes home in smaller ways, when we feel our susceptibility to seasonal heat and cold (truths which become more pronounced as we age) or experience our mere mortalness in the ocean or on a mountain, we have new respect for our place in the scheme of things. We feel the importance of our presence and also the unimportance of it.
Even in the safety of my house, buttoned down tight with all children and dogs present and accounted for, the Monday storm had moments that completely caught my attention. Lightning so close I could almost feel it; a loud crack and then a big thump as a branch hit the roof; the noise of the wind whistling so loudly it competed with conversation.
I wasn't ready for that storm or for the winter it heralded. I wasn't ready for chilling cold and what a whipping wind can do with it. But I took it all in, knowing that while winter may not yet have arrived, it waits eagerly outside autumn's door and I still have much harvesting to do.
Write to Jennifer Hansen at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 515 Enterprise Drive, Suite 106, Lowell, Ark. 72745. E-mail her at:
Family, Pages 33, 35 on 10/31/2007