Today is the first day of fall and I have mixed emotions about that. I enjoy fall, I really do! Sure, I don't enjoy cold temperatures, but a bit of briskness in the air isn't unwelcome to me. What I do love, however, is what comes with fall. Pumpkin patches, beautifully colored turning leaves, hot chocolate (no coffee for this girl), comfy jeans and sweaters (okay, who am I kidding, I wear sweaters year-round! LOL!), just the feeling of warmth that I associate with this season. Memories of sitting inside Grandma's warm house on a crisp evening, cozy with a blanket, surrounded by pumpkins and other fall decor, popcorn on our laps, enjoying some sort of tv show or movie. Memories of taking sweet Brookie to a pumpkin patch, decorating pumpkins, finding leaves, giggling as we take a walk and crunch them under our feet. There's a lot to love about fall.
What I don't love is what comes after fall. The all out cold of winter. The Nebraska ice and snow that makes moving difficult for me, both deep in my joints and in the fear of falling, the struggles to scrape and clean off my car to go anywhere. I don't love the shorter days and longer nights that somehow feel lonelier. I don't love traipsing through snow and I don't love the monochromatic colors of brown and then white and then brown and white mixed together.
It is true that it is my genuine hope that I will not spend another cold winter alone in Nebraska. Hopefully winter will find me in milder Texas. Sure, they have a winter-ish season. A season when my sister wears sweatshirts instead of t-shirts with her jeans and flip flops. And it does get brisk there...chilly even sometimes. And, I've even heard rumors that it has snowed there before...even though it only lasted a day or two before melting away again.
But what I am looking forward to most is being surrounded by my family...drinking hot chocolate together, planning for Thanksgiving and then Christmas. Since Grandma has been gone, I don't have that, at least not in a physical sense. Anna and I can talk about Thanksgiving plans on the phone, and I can call Leah from the store and ask her opinion on Christmas gifts for her little bundles of joy. But it just isn't the same. And I will relish being there, together. I will miss the color of Nebraska leaves, the way that Nebraskans get on fall football days, maybe even a little bit of the snow (at least on Christmas Eve and Day!). But to me, those things are so secondary...the background to a life fulfilled.
And I find it quite ironic that I fully intended for this to be a post NOT about my attempting to move to Texas! I sincerely came here to speak about the literal changing of seasons and yet I somehow came back to the changing of seasons in my life. Sorry about that...I feel like a broken record. And yet, this is me and this is what is going on in my life. So I guess I should embrace it, eh?
With that, I leave you and sincerely say HAPPY FALL! May whatever this season of life brings to you be blessed and filled with love!
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