Autumnal Reverie

I am back in my quiet and familiar home but still feeling a bit disoriented. Both of these recent trips, the one to Colorado and the one to North Carolina, sort of came about like a haphazard fall of dominoes being back to back. They were planned but somehow took place like rushing river falls...both of which I saw on each of my journeys. My visit with my family was sweetly sad as we gathered together one afternoon to distribute the ashes of both of my parents and part of the ashes of my sweet younger sister who passed away a number of years ago. There was both laughter and tears and not much formal ceremony. We are not a formally religious family and calmly accepting of the way our lives have gone. The ashes now rest on the side of a mountain with a view of the fall valley, facing a regal mountain in an area that we all love, and in the evening the ceremony was blessed over a couple of bottles of Malbec.

I feel the closeness of the impermanence of time which hangs like a damp cloth about my shoulders when I return from unfamiliar territory. This bittersweet feeling is stronger because my husband left today for Indonesia and will be gone for many weeks. It is a small project from which he will make no money, but a project that he believes will help their government move into networking ecological projects. I love him enough to let him fly far away when he needs that. We put our heads together before he left to see what house errands could be completed before his departure.

I now move alone through the rooms unpacking and making piles of laundry and sorting piles of unread mail, which will help fill the coming days. The weather is sublimely misty and cold and seems in sync with my feelings.

House plants in pots, just a few this year, have been moved inside and back to their space by the breakfast corner windows and if the weather clears I will load some of the split wood into the wheelbarrow and move it to a rack by the porch. Then I will pull out the zinnias and other vines that need to be cleared. While I was gone I received a box of 50 new narcissus bulbs and a few allium bulbs that need to find homes in the yard and that will take another afternoon.

For the cool evenings that are to come I will fill by sorting and working with my many photos of the fall colors in the Blue Ridge and Great Smokies that filled me with joy as I took them. I also will smile as I review the photos of the animals, large and small, that let us visit their neck of the woods. I also have a grandchildren sitting job next week and that will make the week seem much less lonely and briefly crazy full.

My life is rich and made richer by the thoughtful comments on my blog while I was away.