(I'll get to Lucy & Ethel, the new girls, in the next post. Promise.)
I have a strange relationship to Fall. I've decided to embrace this rather than feeling guilt or regret about it. It is undeniably gorgeous outside, and I love the richness of the world, in color and tone, in heavy seedheads and reckless jumble of garden, in the luxurious, golden, and somehow mellowed quality of the sunlight. I recently drove up to visit my parents, which is a two-hour trip by highway and is one of the most boring stretches of Indiana imaginable (!)--but this time, we zipped through a blurred tapestry of magnificent texture and brilliant, brilliant colors. Everything everywhere was ripe and full, and for that length of time I could forget my beef with Fall and just steep in the beauty.
However, if a mostly pagan person has a Good Friday, it is this season. Or at least it is for this person (who really prefers not to identify with any one dogma, thank you.)
I'm not certain which precisely to blame--the degree to which I adore the green, growing months, or the amount I dread when everything outside is faded into an endlessly bleak gray and dull brown, when you step outside the door and shiver into yourself rather than stretching forward happily into the beauty of the day. Either way, I usually waffle back and forth for most of autumn without feeling able to truly enjoy it. I have just enough sense left to know that I am missing out on the essence of this season because I dread the next.
Well, here's the deal. Lately I've been dabbling in facing up to my honest emotions, trying to honor them and feel them and hopefully proceed on, and let them pass by with me the richer for the experience. This admittedly has something to do with a chicken, which is...humbling. But it also has much to do with a series of friends who are navigating truly rough times, and with going through my own growth and transformation in a year of no job and only a little bit of faith.
Which brings me to the title of this post: Frederick the mouse. A book from my childhood...I really should own a copy, and so should you. I think of Frederick every fall when the weather is beautiful and I know that I only have a few more moments of this bliss before the cold comes to stay. While the other field mice frantically, perpetually, scurry to gather and store as much of the summer's bounty as possible, Frederick is a dreamer who doesn't appear to be doing much other than lingering by the flowers, soaking up the sunshine, and listening to the warm voices of the breeze.
In the depths of the following winter, however, Frederick's gifts are revealed: when the food runs low, and the cold & dark are most oppressive, Frederick begins to speak of the memories he stored up throughout the summer and fall--all of the colors, scents, and textures in all that beauty--and while he describes these wonderful things that are so far away, they become real for the other cold, listless mice. While Frederick tells his tales, his friends and family are sustained by what they were too busy to enjoy, and for a magical moment, everyone is warmed and content.
[Sorry, but I find this suddenly quite amusing: is it any wonder that I am not a driven businessperson? Ha! That's right, I blame my parents for their hippie children's books! Oh, that is fantastic.]
So. Ahem. My point is that this year, I am determined to be Frederick. Rather than shying away from these extravagant days of limpid sunshine and drenched color, I am wallowing in them. The winter is still going to be cold, and the day will come in February (and then again every other hour in March) when I am going to lose my mind if I can't step outside and enjoy it rather than shivering away in search of another sweater--I know this. It can't be helped. It is how I am. It is part of the cycle.
But this day is a gift. I am appreciating the bejeezus out of it.
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