Change Of Season!?

TUES., OCT. 10, 2000, 6:51 AM
FARM, STUDY

It is cold this morning, and your heater didn’t have enough fuel to both get and keep this room warmly comfortable. So one aspect of change to the cold season is your continuing responsibility to keep the stoves in fuel and “going”. You checked the elephant ears, and they seemed to survive in their somewhat protected corner. Yet you realize that some morning, soon, those giant leaves will be limp and drooping, the victim of some cold temperature they can’t “stand up to.”

The leaves on the big trees are changing color, and a few are falling. This is the season that these great, old trees drop their leaves, giving you, from here, a more “open” view of the eastern sky. This may be the last cutting of lawn grass, because the growth will stop and there will be too many dead leaves on top.

It now is time to cut firewood, for, as you see again, even feeding just the fireplace can use all of the wood that you cut, rather lackadaisically. The saw seems to be working. ‘Tis the season for cutting that keeps up with the burning.

There still are outdoor chores, but soon it shall be more comfortable to be staying inside. You should finish the mailing of Our Ruminations, with its Autumn color paper, but now time to consider what the next blue one will feature. So, while there are some seasonal differences, there should be a Ruminations for each and every season. (That can be an early quote for this next one.)

Yet now that you are Emeritus you have lost the “feel” for classes that marked each season. There is a slight feeling of regret that your career is past, but only slight. You finished up at just the right time (ol’ #48). You no longer have the energy and drive to do all that you once did, rather easily. Your presentation to the Methodist adult class went well, but it took more preparation that “in days of yore.” The now familiar hospice “contribution” comes soon, and that, again, will take more preparation that it once did.

You see the sunrise colors on the leaves ahead of you, and, in your mind, you can contrast these with the twilight sky you watched last evening. They are different, but also somewhat alike. And in a somewhat like manner, when you drop your body and move on from this life it shall be different… but also an obvious “continuation”. For the end of a day “makes way” for the beginning of another. When the light fades then there is darkness, but out of this comes dawn and, hence, another day, different from others, but also with some likenesses and continuity.

As you grew up in California and then lived also in Hawaii the change of seasons was more symbolic than actual. With My help, you were fortunate to come here for most of your adult life, a geographic place where each of the four seasons is identifiable and just about the same length.

Though the “seasons” of your life have not been equal in length (fortunately) you can identify and remember childhood in Long Beach, adolescence and young adulthood, in several places, adulthood, with marriage, family, and a career, in these locations, and finally, elderliness and “the coming of winter.” Each has been a fine season, and you appreciate My active relationship with you, in the last portion of your academic career and on into Emeritus status.