Seasons of Life

In the neighborhood

We’ve had some wonderfully warm and sunny fall days this past week. On one of these delicious days, early morning found me eating my bowl of oatmeal on the back porch, enjoying the gentle rhythm of the glider and the soft descent of golden leaves in the trees surrounding the back of the house. Quiet moments with many visiting birds. Comical nuthatches, courting downy woodpeckers, a tufted titmouse or two, one scampering wren, playful chickadees, and a merry nut-happy grey squirrel.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like fall is more spectacular than I ever remember. And not just spectacular but elongated over weeks of riotous color and shimmering royalty from trees decked long in autumn splendor. It’s just been an exhilarating, life-enlarging month.

If one’s life could be compared to the four seasons, I’m perhaps in the fall stretch (if you divide 100 years….my life expectancy….by four). AARP helped me figure this out when they started sending me ads in my late forties. Fifty to seventy-five –the age when one is mature, robust, full of color from accumulated life experiences. 

I remember fall seasons when the leaves barely got a chance to strut their stuff before cold winds, down-pouring rain, and gloom snatched their glory into piles of wet globs that defied the rake or lawn sweeper for weeks on end.

Trees in the parking lot near Panera Bread on NC 55 in Apex

Well I can’t be coy with the Lord. He knows what I’m thinking . . . that I’d like for this season in my life to be like the Fall of 2011 in the Triangle. And maybe that is His plan and will be His gift. If however, He sends rainy skies and grey days my way, may He also help me to light the fire, make a cup of tea, share an hour in conversation with a neighbor or friend and make the most of the fall of my life---however it comes and however long it lasts before the cold winter of my life dusts my doorstep with flakes of white. Even there, may I look for the exquisite poetry and beauty of that season. And may it be a long and lovely one too, Lord. 

Oh yes, today is my birthday, so grant me license for such philosophical musing. It’s a long-standing birthday habit of mine!