The Best Kind of Goodbye

This year I have not been anxious to let go of autumn.

There have been wonderful, soul-soothing days of sunshine and 60-degree weather that I have clung to like a dog playing tug-of-war on the other end of a big, juicy bone. In spite of sub-freezing nights and two early snows, I have been determined to keep five pots of begonias alive and thriving for Thanksgiving weekend.

I did, and they did. As they hung off my deck yesterday in all their bright pink splendor, I made sure everyone noticed them one last time. They afforded us a splash of color amid the fallen leaves, now brown and drying and spread like a crunchy blanket over the yard.

This was the setting for our final Thanksgiving hurrah, an afternoon outside around the fire pit, roasting sticks in hand and a last, guilt-free chance to indulge in abundant, delightful food that has been absent from our South Beach Diet menu of the past six weeks.

Long about mid-afternoon, our cell phones began buzzing with warnings of near-blizzard conditions predicted for our area today, but I ignored them. It was fall, I insisted to myself and the others. And then my daughter-in-law took the picture.

It is one of those photos that short-circuits the eyes and lands right in the heart. In it, Beenie, Bootsie, Heero, and Zoomie are tossing up handfuls of leaves, which then rain down on them all in a shower of pure joy. You see this in their faces.

For me, the picture works as a metaphor. In it, I see that this is the way I need to release autumn--in a dramatic, exhilarating gesture of delight and gratitude. There is no reason why I shouldn't do that, considering all that autumn--and these past several days in particular--have given me.

On Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, we celebrated my mom's 94th birthday. Happy and well, she was able to go with us to the yearly gathering of our extended family, which now numbers five generations of the descendants of my grandparents. This year, there were seventy-something of us present. Then came two great days with our own kids and grandkids here at the lake. Humbly and gratefully, I acknowledge that autumn owes me nothing. It has given me everything, and I graciously let it go.

The snow and wind began mid-afternoon today. I let them have the begonias. I restocked my depleted fridge with healthy food. I put up the Christmas tree. This is the best kind of goodbye--one that brings, along in its wake, a kind of hello.

Hello, winter. Hello, Christmas season. I am ready to shop and decorate and play Christmas music. I am ready to turn over a new calendar page--and, I guess you might say, a new leaf.