“Autumn, season of memory, where the past lives” from The Drowned by John Banville
Rainy, dark and damp. The sun showed up only for minutes as striated hot pink clouds over the trees on the hill early this morning. It’s above freezing, the rain melting the snow, but it’s the kind of cold that goes straight to the bone.
This is the kind of Autumn day I longed for. The kind I used to curse until it seemed as if we might not get any more.
In the past, the long nights and dreary days of Autumn came with a kind of melancholy for me. What I was feeling was too sad, too much. The sadness was not specific to me, but the past in general. Or maybe it was witnessing the passing, the act of ending.
So I did what I could to avoid it. I filled up the weeks before the holidays, both Thanksgiving and Christmas. I kept busy, preparing, decorating, baking, doing. I did what I could to not feel, to pretend the melancholy didn’t permeate the air around me.
But it was on the holidays themselves that I felt the most lonely. And the more people I was surrounded by, the lonelier I was.
Now instead of pushing away the sadness of Autumn, I embrace it. I allow myself to sink into it. I let it seep into me. I leave my studio before it gets dark, finishing my work in the house by the wood stove. I slow down, do less instead of more. I allow the rhythms of the natural world to guide me.
I look to the sleeping trees and the burrowing chipmunks. The snakes hibernating in the cracks in the foundation, the rats looking for a winter home.
When I give myself over to the melancholy, it becomes something warm in my chest. Something to sit with. And I find it’s not so much sadness as quiet acceptance.
Maybe it has something to do with getting older. Having experienced so many autumns, I know this feeling isn’t forever, but something I’m passing through or that is passing through me.
Or perhaps it’s that I’m not as sad and lonely as I used to be. So it’s easier for me to see the wistful beauty in the gray days and long nights.
That’s beautifully said.
We’re on the threshold to wintering. I have struggled in past years with deep sadness and depression this time of year, but am trying to take my cues, as you describe them so well, from nature. Time to hibernate ideas and let my body rest more. I’m slowly learning how to join with rather than resist.
I still have to work at it LoisJean, but writing about it on my blog is a good reminder for me, because I can see my progress from year to year. Enjoy hibernating and know when you are done, it will be time for your ideas to bloom.
Maria, your ability to express your inner thoughts and feelings so well is a gift to your readers. I see a reflection of myself in what you said. This was honest and poetic!
Thank you Barbara, Makes me feel a little closer to you knowing you see yourself in it.
Thank you for this eloquently said reminder that I needed to hear also. It’s been a challenging fall for me with my dad not doing well, plus my mom too, and complicated relationship with my dads wife. Sure has tested me. But I really appreciate the ‘quiet acceptance’ insight as that feels like where I’ve landed. At least for now.
It sounds like a difficult time for you Barb. I hope you can find some peace and glad to have been a bit helpful.