I was worried our weather was jumping from summer to winter without the beautiful autumn for which the east coast is famous. I started to go stir crazy. I felt I might tear at my skin and shred my clothes, become a wild animal, one that belonged in this forest. That’s how completely the incessant rain and grey curtain of thick air that settled around everything affected me. It was almost foggy, though cooler air is required for fog. Fog can be beautiful in it’s texture and chiascuro. But this was cloying wet air with no dimension, opaque, suffocating. Combined with the tangled green jungle surrounding my new home, I was so claustrophobic I didn’t even enjoy walking the dogs. Everybody said it was unusual for this time of year, maybe post hurricane, maybe my fault for bringing the rain from Seattle. But this wasn’t Seattle weather. This felt like a swamp.
I’m homesick for northwest air. I miss the soaring pines and firs, the high sky, mountains and water that decorate the land like jewelry. I miss mist that has transparency, and dew that sparkles like diamonds, highlighting spider webs spun in such beautiful artistry that there must be a divine source. I miss the crows that descend at this time of year in such great numbers it feels like dark magic at work, even though I know they are feeding on the trees of the arboretum. I miss the eagles and herons that sit like sentries on the platforms in the lake on each side of the 520 bridge. I miss my house. I miss my friends, my family. But most of all, I miss my boy.
Fall is a dying season, when leaves dry up and fall off trees, flowers stop blooming, grass stops growing. The earth prepares itself for winter, for dormancy. It feels like that is happening to my heart. I knew it would be painful. I saw my friends wander around with unseeing eyes that first fall after a child left the nest, grief etched on their faces. Now I’m one of them. I wear that lonely place in my soul like a secret scar. Because his childhood is over. My job is finished. When he returns he will be a man, never needing me quite the same way again. It’s a necessary cycle of life, like leaves falling from a tree, beautiful, poignant. The wind has taken this leaf of mine on a journey far away. He has changed colors by now. But he said, in the lines of a poem he wrote before he left, that I would still recognize him.
The barometer did finally fall here. The air cooled and dried out. The leaves turned from green to yellow, have started to fall. I can see through the forest. There is suddenly space in the choking terrain. Maybe space for grief. The sun shone and the demons have receded, revealed themselves to be internal rather than external. Winding roads lined in old stone walls have regained their bucolic charm. Mailboxes are decorated with corn stalks and hay bales, scarecrows and pumpkins, pots of red and yellow mums. We saw a young deer on the lawn of school the other night, small antlers gleaming in the moonlight. There is magic here too.
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