A season for meditation

Autumn is here, and for the first time in years, I am actually looking forward to it. My friend Mark used to say that this was his favorite season, and I never understood that. I mean, in this part of the country we don't have Fall colors. Leaves turn almost overnight from green to brown - and that happens sometime in November.

To me, having lived in the midwest, Fall used to be a harbinger of the coming winter, which would last over 6 months. We had such gorgeous Fall colors - from yellow to golden to orange to red. It was breathtaking to walk through a street and see this profusion of color. But the joy was temporary - underneath it was the feeling that Fall was all too short, and within four weeks, winter would begin.

Month after winter month brought perpetually gray skies.....Gray skies are the bane of the midwest. One couldn't look outside and tell the time. The day began gray, and was the same dreary gray until it got dark. And the winds.....all you thought about when you went outside was fleeing somewhere indoors. You would wrap yourself in layers and still find your nose freezing when you went out. When you entered the warmth of a building, your nose would thaw and hurt.

The bitter cold made me long for the warmth of family, of a loved one to come home to. I was mostly alone, in a frosty marriage....Coming home meant facing whatever mercurial temper the X had to offer, and usually the mood ranged from mildly negative to bitterly punishing. What punishing anger that was! Sometimes days would pass before I discovered the cause of it.

My biggest dream those days was to be a normal wife. My picture of domestic tranquility was a man and a woman, sitting in peace by a fireplace, a mug of hot chocolate in hand. No frozen silences, no trying to figure out what I had done this time to trigger this temper episode. Just simple harmony.

Winter meant having to come home early....And coming home early meant coming home to unpredictable moods. It was too bitterly cold to go anywhere else. I hated myself for thinking this way - I felt I was letting down my partner. Yet I couldn't help it.

I waited for the all-too-short and much beloved summer - long days, a lighter load in graduate school, and long rides on my bicycle. The laurel trees bursting into bloom seemed to echo my mood - branch after laden branch was filled with white flowers. Summer had an air of exhilaration to it. An air of liberation.

In later years, the X got a job in a different town. As dysfunctional as our relationship was, I still loved and missed him. I believed that marriage was for life, and whatever bad patch it was could be fixed. And one day, just one day - we would be a normal couple, at ease with each other.

Winter still meant being away from warmth of any kind. It meant coming home to an empty house, which was still better than a dysfunctional house. The dream of domestic tranquility remained unrealized.

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Now, after all these years, I am actually enjoying Fall. I watch with new eyes the crispness in the air, the stillness of the lake near our home. This morning when I drove by it, mist rose off the surface, swirling in the air. The lake's surface was glassy, reflecting the swirling mist.

Perhaps nature was in meditation, wrapping itself in serenity..... The wild romance of spring was over; so was the heady craziness of summer with long days and partying folk. Now was the time for deep reflection, for calming down and watching life go by. Watching perturbations and being unaffected by it.

Leaves will brown, brisk winds will blow them away. The earth will remain calm through all this, resting and letting go. In a few weeks, winter will drape it in frost. The earth will submit without resistance, slumber awhile, and come Spring, wake up refreshed.