gentle transitions

Two weeks ago, before we left for camp,  I took a photo of the nature table at the kids’ school. I knew it, like the world around us, would look different when we returned.

Earlier this week, as the kids settled back into their beautiful classroom and shared stories of our camp adventures with their classmates and teachers, I slipped away to photograph the nature table again.

I love the gentle transition of the nature table. The pink silk remains. As does the orange butterfly.

That’s how it is with these seasonal changes. Fall starts to whisper to us in August. A few chilly nights here and there. A little yellow in the trees.

And now, even as we turn our attention to apple-picking and harvest celebrations, summer is still with us. In our memories. In the warm sun on our backs in the afternoon. In the dahlias in the garden and the wild flowers in the meadows. Summer’s song is getting a little softer as autumn’s splendor takes the lead, but it is still there.

It didn’t used to feel this way to me. It used to feel jarring and abrupt. One minute it was summer. The next it was fall. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t prepared. I resented the change. I didn’t have time to look for warmer clothes. I didn’t want to gather firewood to make heat. I was busy.  I had deadlines. I had a schedule that was full from morning to night regardless of the weather or the season.

And my life was not working for me.

It has taken me nearly a decade of conscious choices and slow, steady changes to shift my focus away from the popular culture’s calendar of days, which never felt right to me in my core, and back into the rhythms of nature…the seasons, the tides, the moon, the planets, the heartbeat, the breath.

This last week, celebrating Equinox in a cabin in the woods, has been a powerful touchstone for me. It’s not the crazy shout from the rooftops “I’m living my dreams!!!!” energy that I felt back in the spring during the Power Moms book tour.

But it is equally important to me.

There are so many times recently that I have looked at my husband and our beautiful children and this kinda-quirky, non-mainstream, doing-it-our-way life that we are slowly creating together and I have to pinch myself to be sure it is all real.

I’m not pretending anymore. I am really living my dreams. And it is even more wonderful than I imagined. And I am filled with gratitude.