Savoring the Moment

The morning is beautiful. Cool with touches of warmth as the sun begins to stream through the trees. The air tingles my nose just slightly – a preview of the nose crackling cold that is to come. But not today. Today the air will grow gently warmer until it feels almost like summer – almost but not quite.

No matter what the temperature is the senses know when we have passed into another season. The colors have changed. Reds and pinks and sunny yellows no longer predominate. Shades of purple and wine and deep gold and rust have moved into to take their place. The leaves share their space on the trees with pine cones and seed clusters and those helicopter seeds we love to watch flutter to the ground. The grass is still rich and lush but it is a deeper shade of green. A more mature, more sedate shade. There are a few scattered leaves on the ground that crackle and crunch when we walk about. The unmistakable smell of early fall is in the air.

While all these things tell us that the seasons are changing, I think it is the light that tells us most of all. The sun still rises in the eastern sky at dawn but it rises much further to the south than it did just a few weeks ago. Every day it is a little later. When the rays of light finally come they caress the earth with a deeper shade of gold, lingering low and long on the horizon. The sun seems to rest a bit before climbing up into the sky - as though it's a little tired after all the summertime brilliance.

In the evening, much sooner than I expect it, the sun begins its descent. This time seeming to rush towards the horizon. No lingering now. Just a deep descent into the deep purple shades of the early night.

These short days – still much longer than we will have in only a few more weeks – fill me with a sense of urgency. A need to be outside as much as possible, to complete projects that lay dormant during the summer's heat, to prepare for the winter but also for the spring as I tend my flower beds and plant the bulbs that will greet us when the days begin again to lengthen.

However much we may surround ourselves with artificial environments – with light that goes on and off at will, with heat that can be precisely controlled, with breezes and winds that turn on at the flip of a switch or turn of a dial – I don’t believe we can ever silence the song that sings inside our bodies in harmony with the seasons. Nor do I think we ever should. We are creatures of the Earth. Wherever we may have come from, wherever our souls may be going, we are here now. We should take the time to savor every nuance of each moment that we share with this extraordinary world.

Through a Squirrel's Eyes

Already so late in the month. September is supposed to give us time to savor the last few sweet days of summer - those extra weeks after school begins but before we reach the equinox. But here we are already several days into autumn.

Everything seems to be moving faster this year. I anticipate endless summer days as though by believing in them I can make them happen, can stop the march of time. But it doesn’t work. Time just keeps passing – whether you believe in it or not.

Or does it? The philosophers and the scientists aren’t so sure. Neither am I sometimes. The past lives so strongly in memories. Dreams bring alternate life experiences that pass by in only a few seconds as I sleep. Who can say what is real and what is not?

Yesterday, as I lay reading in the hammock, a squirrel was perched in a nearby tree scolding me very loudly. It was easy to tell that my presence was interfering with what he needed to do. Watching him as he continued to harass me, I imagined how the world would look if I were able to hang upside down on a tree trunk like he was doing.

Looking out at the world through my imaginary "squirrel eyes" I was surprised to see how much broader my perspective was. When I look with my human eyes, I limit my sense of the world to the parts that I walk on. The world I live in is the ground, the place I put my feet, where my home is. Oh sure, I look up at the sky and admire the tops of trees. But I don’t think of them as places to go. They are just places I can see.

Looking through my squirrel eyes I see so many more possibilities. Trees I can run up as easily as I walk along a sidewalk, branches that are highways to another tree or a roof, the endless expanse of lawn, the garden, the road if I dare to cross it, the porch with its supply of peanuts.

There are so many places I can go and so many directions – up, down, sideways. I can hang upside down. I can jump. I can almost fly. Who knew a squirrel’s world would be so exciting?

When I finished musing about what it might be like to be a squirrel, I noticed that my admonisher was still on the tree trunk, still watching me carefully, but now he was no longer scolding me.

He was making a new sound, a long drawn out chirrup. Unlike the insistent, staccato rhythm of his scolding noise this sound was slower, more "conversational", almost consoling? Perhaps he had been imagining what it was like to be me and was offering condolences for my limitations.

I wonder if he ever notices that time is passing by more quickly?

Water

In my deepest meditations my mouth sometimes fills with water. The water is warm. My mouth feels soothed and nurtured by it.

Allowing the water to rest in my mouth it feels as though there is a gentle current, almost imperceptible, that connects this water with the liquids of my body, with the water in the air, in the earth, in streams and oceans, with every water molecule everywhere. As though somehow the water in my mouth is both within me and outside of me. As though the water is flowing into my mouth from all of these sources and then returning to them. And again I feel nurtured by it.

The water just appears, is suddenly just present, like a river source hidden deep below a forest pool or gently trickling out from beneath the rocks of a mountain slope. It feels like a gift. When I allow myself to swallow, it feels like a gift returned with gratitude and with connection.

Another Kind of Season

Sadness. Emptiness. Anticipation. A little depression. Melancholy. Freedom. Pride. Satisfaction. Excitement. A hole in my heart. A space where there should be something. An expectation of footsteps that never come….

Only a few of the many descriptors I could use to describe what it feels like to have my youngest leave home for her first year at college. Knowing well that even though there will be regular and frequent visits home it will never be quite the same again.

A season has passed. A new season is beginning. Each brings its own beauty, its own special magic but always we remember the one before and anticipate its return. With the cycle of children it seems like each season ends never to return except in our hearts, in our memories, in the photo albums gathering dust in the cabinet.

Somewhere deep inside I know that this is the view from a small perspective. In the eyes of the universe the season of children begins again with the next generation who will be born and grow and move on just as mine have done. And then my children will be the ones experiencing all the emotions of joy and sadness, pride and loss, freedom and emptiness that I feel at this moment.

The four-leggeds still look to the door for her arrival. The wise old cat sits in her room when I return home from moving her into her dorm. He is alert when I walk in. Welcoming, questioning? I am not sure if he is there to comfort his own sense of loss or if he is there for me when I need him once again. Saving me from entering a room that is empty. He is often like that. Knowing somehow when he is needed the most.