Weathering Transitions

When the only way out is through

Transitions have always been hard for me and hard on me. And this season — the annual lingering journey between gold and gray — presents the challenge of change, and the demand of surrender.

I’m grateful for the morning school bus that rumbles down my road each day. The mere sight of it makes me want to buy school supplies and unearth my winter boots from the back of the closet.

Scarf season is nigh.

I’ve stepped up my morning walks — striding (and more often strolling) past half-harvested fields of corn. I love the sharp edges of the harvest days: Half the fields are in winter, half still clinging to autumn. Soon it will all be gone.

I stole a beautiful afternoon this week to escape from my office and sneak off to my favorite swimming hole. I wore a down vest and shorts. The waterfall was fierce from recent rains, and I chickened out and abandoned my swim. I sat on a boulder and read a book until the spray from the falls warped the paper.

The other morning my husband told me about a vivid dream he’d had: The barn’s sides were caving in and the roof was starting to collapse.

“That’s a dream about winter,” I said. (I love interpreting dreams.)

And today — a spunky group of turkeys trotted across the road just in front of me. Soon enough, one of them might be anchoring a groaning Thanksgiving table, surrounded by tasty sides. (I’m not supposed to think about that … but I do.)

On the side of the road, I noticed they’d left something behind.

As I write this, the last batch of late sweet corn simmers on the stove. I won’t enjoy another fresh ear until next August. I tossed the cobs and shucked leavings into the compost bin; next spring I’ll spread the compost over the kitchen garden, and the cycle will begin again.

{Fall food pyramid}

This is the season of leavings, of boxed up flip flops and denatured inflatable pools. Down drift the red maple leaves and the golden willow spears, as the garden tools are stored in the barn until spring. Part of me will be left behind, too, as my cells shift and reassemble into my more insulated self.

We who live in sharp-seasoned places face this every year. It’s our annual time of wistful surrender, when we’re also surrounded by cues and reminders of what it really means to be alive.

Departments

Railey Savage’s JUNK FOOD: Arrested Development

Railey writes:

“I had a fight with a neighbor this summer. This was very unusual - we’ve been good pals for the five years I’ve lived in this house. But something shifted one day and, on the heels of a misunderstanding, we yelled at each other across the shared driveway. She said she was done with my “childish behavior,” and I shouted back, “Everyone is a child if you spend all your time mothering.” Yeesh.

But the other day, while watching 2001: A Space Odyssey for the thirtieth time, it occurred to me that the neighbor and I were seeing each other mid-transition. We hadn’t had any meaningful interactions since covid, and a lot has changed since 2020 on both macro and micro levels. And change is flipping hard. Without the benefit of a big ole leg bone turning into a spaceship, we often can’t identify our subjective, personal transitions until they’re in the rearview.

I am not the same person I was at the beginning of 2020. But, none of us are. I’ve set up my life such that I have the time and space to ruminate and think my thoughts at my leisure (read: all day long), which makes me both more, and less well-suited for change; I have the time and space to process things, but in a vacuum. So, when I returned inside after the shout-off I had the luxury of unpacking what had just gone down.

The conclusion I came to was that the leg bone had gone full spaceship, but that I had not been privy to everything that happened between the cuts. In 2001 the transition makes for an iconic cut from man’s deepest past to his still-distant future by artfully skipping over four million years of human strife, reflection, and evolution. But in my driveway, it felt like my neighbor and I were yelling from opposite sides of the cut (leg bone vs. spaceship) without an acknowledgement of how much happens between one and the other.

We have since made up, though things aren’t quite what they used to be. Still, change is hard, and I don’t begrudge someone the pace of her journey …

… a lot can happen in four million years.”

Laura Likes: (Where my friend Laura recommends GREAT things)

Laura writes:

“As the wheel of the year turns, it's always a good idea to prepare for the transition of the household into fall and winter. What I do kind of varies from year to year, but the consistent features are 

1) I check on the spice cabinet, tossing what's old and ordering fresh. Here's a good article on what to chuck out, and when. You want good strong spices for pumpkin bread, you know. 

2) I make up a bunch of soup stock on the first even slightly chilly weekend, which I then freeze into cubes and just keep in the freezer for use over the next few months. I find that chicken stock is great to have around when you need a quick meal, so just use your favorite recipe, let it cool, pour into cube trays, freeze it, and then whenever you need something warm and nourishing, you're good to go. The stock I find myself reaching for most often, though, is this one made from cheese rinds, because it tastes great and has a wonderful depth of flavor, and it's handy for whipping up a vegetarian option when you need it. I have a lot of vegetarian friends and it's great to be able to whang together a nice soup for them on the spur of the moment. 

3) I thoroughly clean, de-scale, and prep my tea samovar, which is maybe the best purchase my husband and I have ever made. It's easily the most-used appliance in our house in the fall and winter. There's just something about making a pot of tea and having the hot water ready to go, on tap. 

It feels good to do these small things, a simple way to feel as though you're doing something useful, making it easier to have cozy autumn and winter weekends without scrambling at the last minute, when there’s so much else clamoring for your attention. 

Emily Masons Targeted Upsell: What the internet wants me to buy

Emily writes:

“What’s New?

Fall is my absolute favorite time of year; I look great in the clothes, I love the food, and my birthday is two weeks before halloween.

I’m happy that we as a society have embraced fall merchandising! Orange hues! Pictures of leaves on everything! And of course…

Pumpkin spice! You can find pumpkin spice everything these days: it’s no surprise to see it spicing up more conventional items like coffee and candles, but then there are the less conventional spiced products — like…

Pumpkin Spice…Cat Litter.

(Technically, it’s called “Fall Frolic” but…come on, we all know what that means.)

Because I guess everything really should smell like pumpkin spice this time of year!

Alrighty then!

Why am I Seeing This?

I googled the phrase “pumpkin spice.” Oops.

Did they Sell Me? 

Nnnnooooo. 

Let me be clear: I don’t have a problem with Pumpkin Spice; I like it in moderation! (As an aside: I don’t like the general assessment that enjoying pumpkin spice-y things is “basic,” I really don’t like what “basic” stands for, and I find much of the anti-pumpkin spice rhetoric very sexist.)

That being said, there IS a chronic over-saturation of “pumpkin spice” products. I can get behind some of them, but we all have our line in the … LITTER … er — sand.

Pumpkin Spice cat litter is mine. 

Not only does this sound so friggin’ unappealing to me, I did some digging (the human kind, not the cat kind) and the verdict is in: It doesn’t work! 

According to many customer reviews, this cat litter 1) smells terrible, and 2) doesn’t clump properly.

Cat litter, you literally have two jobs! To fail on both counts is unforgivable!

So I’ll stick to the pumpkin spice trifecta: pie, latte, maaaybe a candle. 

I’ll spare my feline the humiliation of spiced litter; doing her business in a box is quite humiliating enough.

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  Love,

  Amy