FALL - ING SCENES

Fall is my favorite season. Yet it seems that something always happens at this time of year, personal or professional that makes me question why I love this season. To me it is a time of renewal even more so than the awakening Spring. Can it be the crisp feel of the evenings? An unexpected carpet of exhausted leaves dressed in their seasonal finery even as they lay fallow on the ground each morning? The children and the buses clogging the roads as they get back to the serious business of life put temporarily on hold during the, oh so brief, summer? Or is it just because I am a late Fall baby?

I do know I don't have to worry anymore about getting that tan I fake all summer. I guess when I'm 80 and not horrendously wrinkled I will bless my aversion to the sun. So many great products on the market these days to give you that sun-kissed glow, and I do love the fashion trend of not wearing hose-pale as Caspar-but it just plain don't matter. Way cool. Now I won't worry about it until we head for our cruise in January. Though I rather suspect a hot golden tan as we commence the trip would be rather unexpected. That luscious ruddy (red) glow when I get off the ship is what people will remember, stare, giggle and point.

And yes, this is the week that the one year anniversary of our dear heart's passing occurs. I didn't know what to expect and how I would feel. How could I? I feel that it was yesterday and as I look at a picture or hear her voice in my head, it still does not seem real. How could I be a motherless child? Why do I feel so connected when she has been gone a whole year? Yet I do. When I hug my own child, when I laugh with my sisters, when I listen to my Father reminisce, it is as if she is in the other room. When I dream I see her active, fiery and always laughing. She has a cloud of dark curly hair and in one scene she is tipping back a cigarette? Who knew the afterlife would allow you such unhealthy indulgences?

My sisters saw her passing this week in a gently swaying ornament and a message on a microwave. So mundane, yet so Mother. Where is the butterfly that I kept seeing at odd moments over the past year? We even planted a Rose of Sharon bush to entice and indulge my butterfly fetish.

Yet now that I think of it, I realize I have been overly concerned this week about my philodendron at work that one of my emps gave me at her passing. I always forget to water it and end up pouring my coffee in it, yet it thrives and grows in spite of my neglect for more than a year now. And what is perched over the overflowing green stem and leaves but a fragile, incandescent little butterfly. Oh duhhh...