Labor Day...Change in the Whether

Sunday morning, quiet, except for the rattle of locusts in the trees behind the house, and a sharp-toned exchange from two little brown wren telling tales on one another.  I am on the porch enjoying the peace of no intrusion, the house all mine for a change.

Up before six this morning, as I am every weekend morning, just in time to hear the night carer's report and wish her a good rest and day, I opened the door to the inclinations of fall.  The purples bloom, there are small pops of scarlet on the ficus trees (or, its more romantic name, weeping fig), and this week, three scarlet spider lilies suddenly shot up straight and tall in the bulb patch out front.

The droopy hellebores and my two sturdy heuchera have picked up their heads from the moody heat of August, no doubt sniffing the change of season.  The morning's cool draws me outside to wander the yard, pull the last brave weeds in the driveway, pick up the night's rain of twigs, plant the dark burgundy pinella I rooted from a broken piece of Nancy's voluptuous yard (I'm hunting for more broken bits, now that I know they root so well), and stand chatting with neighbors of the same inclinations.

Labor Day Monday is early this year, bringing with it seasonal changes not confined to the garden.

My neighbor Anna has gone to the beach for a few months after a trying summer.  Like ours, hers has been riddled with surprises she could well have done without.  I know the months away will be restful for them, and am a bit envious, but I miss knowing she is only a back door away.

My uncle, still asleep, is coming to grips with a turn in which his memory suddenly took another sharp leap backward, layering place and time and event over one another into a difficult-to-decode set of presumptions.  This predicated by nothing, probably, but a temporary change in caregiver and an evening's jaunt into town I took myself for a nice change of pace.  It was good to get out into a social world for a few hours, cheer among people I don't see very often, take a long walk back home...all thanks to Joseph for sitting in for me, even tired as he was after a day working in the yard.  Now my uncle's legs are refusing to hold him up properly, which confines his movements even more.  Time for a change in the caregiving schedule.

Change is hard, whatever good comes of it.  Alexander is beginning kindergarten, after a summer of anxiety about what that means.  A few weeks ago, he told me, "I want to stay five and keep going to playground school!"...that's what he used to call his preschool. Who can blame him?  Five is such an enchanting age, full of curiosity and sweetness and endeavor and soaking in of huge amounts of knowledge about the world, small as it might seem to us, large as it really is to him.  And playground school has its virtues, too.  What did you do today, I would ask him when I picked him up in the afternoons.  "Play," he would say, "just play and play!"  Sounds good to me.   Playing is the most creative thing you can do...ask any artist, any inventor in any field.  Play is inspiration's fertile ground...problem-solving's best arena.

But after a week, he likes his new school and is making new friends, one step toward handling the unwitting shifting about in his young life these days.

Change comes upon us in sometimes simple, not to say simplistic, ways, too.  Last week, I rearranged the furniture on the porch.  Change for change's sake?  you ask.  Not really.  Remember that disgruntlement I mentioned a blog-post ago?  Lately I have been trying to work myself out of it, and small adjustments, I find, are helping me more than big ones.

So why pick on the porch, in which everyone is comfortable, and indeed clusters, taking in the breezes, the sense of being outside, the sense of community where people gather or share what's going on on the street, in our lives.  The pride of my house! (I am, as my husband used to accuse me, house proud...I admit it.)

Well, that's it, to tell the truth.  Because while everyone gravitates to it, I seem to be left without a seat.  I like working on the porch, reading on the porch, writing on the porch, just sitting as the morning opens itself or the evening shades lower.  And while I'm glad everyone else finds that peace there, too, I decided that I needed my own corner, unqualified, uncontested.  I discovered, moreover, that it took little effort to make one...just switching two tables and one chair did the trick. I also discovered that to make it work I'd have to convince people, as tactfully as possible, that the sitting area on the right was the better place for them.  (You didn't think change would work that simply, did you?)

Fall is heating up with more social events, and I am finding ways to make myself part of them again.  A night out with friends, celebrating whatever the occasion, a weekend away to visit a friend (celebrating, too).  I pounced on a chance to host the weekly neighborhood gathering last week, when the young couple down the block who generously began it were on vacation in a cooler climate.  Everyone thanked me for it, but frankly the gesture was pure self-service:  having the pot-luck at my house meant I could finally be there, too.  Even a phone call to a friend...making the time to catch up without the ever-expected "oops!  better run..."  It took two long phone calls, with an "oops" in between, to connect with my college friend Kathy, but we did it.  Opportunities for reconnection are like fall itself...a great breath of change.

A corner of my own seems to be the theme of those little adjustments I find myself making, and feeling better for it:  a corner of space, a corner of time, a corner of my psyche not ringing with other voices.  A chance to be out in the world to wander on my own.

I have to say here that I miss having someone to wander with on the spur of the moment, when getting in the car and riding somewhere, anywhere meant throwing off the blues, frustration, the edge of a quarrel, the uneasiness of the mind cooped up for too long.  Fall has that kind of freedom, no matter what circumstances we are in, and, this year, I most appreciate its gifts.

Happy Labor Day...may your life be for this day a picnic.