First Frost

The alarm sounds and immediately we're all resistant, our senses telling us to remain curled in our thick blankets. We all take a few extra minutes processing what is to happen next, all except my husband. He rises quickly, fearful that slumber will steal him away again. Last night without realising the turn of the weather, I had already decided to gift the boys a bacon sandwich for breakfast. It was after watching my eldest lifting and dropping thick globules of congealed weetabix from his bowl the day before. A true sign of being 'weetabixed out', a signal to tag in something new. My heart hits a quickening pitter patter as the teenager looks me in the eye and utters words of thankfulness and gratitude and gives me one of those smiles that makes you filled to the brim, the sort of smile that you could draw on with a pencil, its just so perfect. I leave the house with layer upon layer, ready for my daily walk to work. Today the ground is glistening, cheekily shining and showing off its newly acquired armour. I step carefully, thinking especially of the tenderness in my right knee. As I walk I catch sight of the glorious low rising sun, she is magnificent today and the reddest I have seen in a long time. I mistakingly glance at her, mesmerised. She returns my gaze and leaves me with spots before my eyes and I delight in the nostalgia and think of girlhood and memories of playing in the heat of the African sun, a different friend. A different time. I walk on. Past the folks breathing out billows of smoke, their faces marked with the concentration of ice removal and the weary interruption of routine. The season is upon us and suddenly thoughts of festivities stir in me: the scent of cinnamon and orange, of Christmas cookies baking and homemade concoctions of warming alcohol. A mental note made to retrieve the wooden advent calendar from its loft hiding place, to begin a list of ideas for stockings that need filling with the lovely but simple things in life. My motivation motto that I use annually when buying gifts for those boys of mine: something they want, something they need, something to wear and something to read. It is still so fitting, still so perfect. Late night drives. Walks, short and long. Visits to the prettiest of villages with picture perfect scenes of decorated trees and sparkling lights. Thick socks and blankets and oodles of hot chocolates. Finding pubs with real fires and cosying in for shared puddings and warm drinks. Moments snatched for journalling. Time spent sat in silence amongst loved ones, each person doing their own thing. Books sifted through and perhaps even read. Letters written and perhaps even sent. Popping out on foot for items forgotten and left off the list that suddenly you can't do without. Films. Ahhh, dear films. All the favourites and the hope of some new. Coffee. Fresh, fresh coffee and the ritual of preparing it. The soundtrack of home. The promise of the new. Vinyl and pain au chocolat and scrabble and early mornings when there's no place to be and no rush to go. This first frost has stirred a-plenty and I am thankful for all that it is bringing my way. I'm swept up in the magic of the season, a Grinch no longer perhaps or for now at least.

Fall

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It is fall. Autumn. That time of year. The leaves are turning all kinds of shades of copper and burnt sienna, yellow ochre and dark crimson and then dropping, dramatically to the floor, as if in communal protest. So self sacrificing it seems. The nights are drawing in and it feels like the closed sign goes up at the door much earlier than usual. The heavier blankets are being pulled from cupboards, too small wellingtons are in desperate need of replacing, last years winter coats are either too snug or in need of some love and attention. Favourite films that lie in the loft with a coating of dust are about to be pulled out because it's that time of year. The time of year where you feel a permission to draw in, to hibernate. 

In my cosiest of moments in this season, I relish all things that generate heat. Hot coffee after being caught in the rain, hot chocolate from a flask in the middle of a walk in the woods, warm toasted pain au chocolat for sunday morning breakfast when everyone thinks they're just getting normal toast, cardigans and dressing gowns and slippers and knitted blankets wrapped around legs whilst cosying up for a family film. Warmth, real warmth.

In my darkest moments in this season, I dread all the things that lack light, the things that draw darkness. The sun seemingly snatched from the sky day after day after day, no light, no blue sky, just varying shades of grey and then darkness. The sense of home as havoc and not haven, hours and hours and hours stuck indoors keeping away from the incessant rain, especially that 'I can't really be bothered to rain type rain', that one makes me the angriest. A heaviness in mood that just will not shift, the weight of it being overbearing and the only cure seeming to be solitude. Sweet dark solitude, my very good friend. My very beguiling enemy. 

My life at this time of year often seems to be in fall, a perpetual state of not standing or walking, just falling. Falling. Falling. Every now and then I get that sense that I'm about to fall safely to my feet and the relief is immense. But just then, I get a nasty jerk and my heart is in my mouth and I feel a lump in my throat and I'm falling once again. Faster, heavier and with more panic. It feels like a dream, that's what people often say isn't it? It's true, it does feel like a dream and sometimes I emerge from it and I laugh at myself, for the drama of it all, the time wasting, the over thinking, the self indulgence and the arrogance. Sometimes, I roll my eyes and feel a kind of anger, you know the 'I can't really be bothered to rain' type of anger. Other times, I'm happy to sit alongside this fall. I watch curiously to see another me procrastinate, to watch her sweep debris under the carpet, to watch her sitting very still on that princess and the pea bed desperately trying to decipher if she can in fact feel the pea. I might just be the kind of girl that will never know, it might be just there under the first few layers but I just won't ever know it. 'I might never know it, I might never know it, I might never know it!' Then I clicked my heels together three times and I woke up and I realised it was all a dream and then I lived happily ever after. The end. 

Autumn

I woke up today with that glass half empty feeling which is more than likely due to my boys having had two restless nights and by default restless nights for me too. The lion that appears before we watch the pink panther is currently bothering my youngest boy and as he settles into his new and first nursery it is perhaps bothering him a little more than usual. This is the reason why I have acute pain in my back from the odd position I assumed trying not to wake hubby whilst also trying to comfort the boy whilst giving him enough room to fall asleep in our bed last night. Not long after I got the youngest back into his own bed I heard the shaky voice of my eldest who was suffering a similar plight but this time at the hands of the forbidden 'scooby doo' that was watched whilst he had a play date at a friend's house last week. I'm quite firm as a mum about lots of things but being scared especially at night I remember so, so clearly from my own childhood (Jaws!!!!!!!!!!) that however tired I am I never ever want them to feel that fear alone.

So, after the school run, desperate to shake off the glass half empty feeling, the youngest boy and I went off for a long walk in our local park and it was pretty breath taking. I love autumn and the park looked just wonderful. The air was fresh and crisp enough to give that exciting feeling of the seasons changing (I was actually a bit peeved last week at the random high temperatures NO!!! I want bog standard seasons thanks!!!) and that cosy winter feeling set in. Watching my boy kick piles of leaves, finding bugs, climbing on tree stumps and trunks with dirt in his nails and mud on his face was the perfect tonic and just like that .... my glass is half full again.