Harvests

The weather turned colder this late week in August, and I, suddenly, compatibly, likewise turned older. This is the week I took my youngest to college.

For 29 years we have had children resident in this house. Twenty-nine years of mess and noise, hugs and hurts, joys and socks and home-made games and piles of shoes that seemed to increase geometrically in volume and size.

So it is perhaps not surprising that this moment hits hard. But it is, gratefully, blunted and eased by the same subtle culprit that caused it to be: the advancing, relentless seasons of time.

In a way, it is right and proper, and indeed pleasurable, that the weather turns cool this time of year. We have all but grown tired of the summer's heat; I am eyeing my woodpiles, eager to put them to use.

So too, sadly, it is right and proper and thankfully a bit pleasurable that my home has turned empty at this time of year.

Fall is the time of reaping what we have sown: if we are fortunate, we are blessed with a full harvest, armloads bursting with bounty. It heralds a time of satisfaction and approaching leisure, when the work is done and we are sated with food, able to enjoy the soothing company of family and friends.

So too in this season of our lives. If we are fortunate, we are blessed with a full harvest, armloads of hugs stored up over the years and a storehouse full of pride in our children. We have tended and tugged them, watered and feed them, guided and prodded and now it is time to let them loose.

We hope never to be far away, but we cannot hover too closely either. It is their time.

Oddly, perhaps appropriately, this entry is my 300th post.

The number 300 in Hebrew is represented by the letter shin, the first letter of the word Shaddai, a name for God that evokes fertility, motherhood and mountains. It is the letter that marks the outside of the mezuzah, the amulet that guards our doorways, guides us across thresholds and watches over our comings and goings.

So it is that my husband and I (and my son!) are coming into a new space, a new year, a new life. All this in the fall of the year, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world. How fortunate that this moment is accompanied by this ephemeral mezuzah, marking this invisible passage of time. Given that life is meant to be lived this way, what more could we ask for?

May you too find that you enter this year with promises anew, and thresholds that are broad enough for all your aspirations.

And may blessings escort you through all your endeavors.

(photo: fall harvest of golden pears, walnut and apple from Seneca Lake, and tomatoes from here)