Friday, September 16, 2011

A Season of Returns

Fall is forever a season of returns for me.  It's my favorite season overall and the season that always seems to bring me full circle in my life.

Fall is the season when I evaluate who and what I've been in the last year.  I look at who I want to become and who I am actively trying to be.  I have the break of the kids in school to be able to stop being with them 24/7 and reflect on them and who they are and who they are striving to be. 

Fall is the season of memories and nostalgia and longing.  Fall is the season of dreams. 

It's not the same hope and promise of Spring, but it is still a time of dreams. 

Maybe it's the back to school and routine season that we all go through that brings us back to dreaming, but however we get there, we end up there.  Fall is when we find ourselves remembering what we wanted to grow up to be when we were little.  Fall is the season when we remember what it felt like to have a far reaching goal and the drive we had to achieve it.  Fall is when we remember the dreams we had just one year ago that got somehow buried in the rubble of the every day drudge.

Some how that thing lost, comes bubbling back up every Fall.

For me it is a season of both slowing down and speeding up.  My thinking slows down a little bit, meaning not that I become dull, but that there are moments to catch my breath and think more than a fleeting thought.  Fall is a season of creativity and sharp beauty.  It is not pastel like Spring or sterile like Winter, it is bold and crisp.  Fall is also a time when I get back to being busy.  In Summer I let things slide a bit to be able to enjoy the life moments as they come.  Those trips to parks and pools and spur of the moment picnics and things not to miss.  But Fall brings a returning renewed responsibility to chores and projects left half finished.  It is a season of being busy and working hard from the moment you wake until the moment your head drops on the pillow. 

What does Fall return to you?