The Spring In Fall

Deb: It’s almost October and spring is in my heart. If you are a regular reader, you know that our spring, our actual May of spring, was decimated by the sudden loss of a dear and darling friend. His death coloured our summer with reconnection. We picked up the phone, messaged on FB, and emailed friends whom we love and adore but don’t see  often. And we did the same for those friends whose frequency of visits we thrive on. We couldn’t get enough of seeing those we loved or were just starting to love. It wasn’t just our thrust of motion that put this connection into place. It was all around us, with everyone we knew, the need to see someone and make a memory.

This September my parents celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary. Within days of that, the boy turned 22, and my Mum-in-law had her birthday with us.  And bless their beaks, it sure kicked off a period of celebration. In the past little while as summer has turned to fall, we have celebrated love and marriage, the coming of a baby, and many many friends’ milestone birthdays. And the interesting thing, the part of all this that made the difference in me, is the fact that they were piled up! Literally. Calendar-wise. Celebration on top of each celebration. These events consumed days and nights and allowed only an hour or so between each celebration. It was like I was being brainwashed in the ways of celebration. There was a “Celebrate good times, come on!” cult that I was slowly and unwittingly becoming a part of.

I looked at my schedule, jam-packed with happy events and panicked around just how the hell I was going to keep all the cards, gifts, donations, dates and addresses straight. I am the type of person who loves an orderly day. I love order and I love to achieve it and laud it. But I am also fine if it dissolves into a pinch of chaos. Maybe ... organized chaos. But this celebralooza was jammed into every day and night for weeks! Seriously, weeks. So I dutifully went through the cards and celebratory offerings and lined them up on the stair-landing in neat piles, whisking each away to its appropriate event. 

This subway sandwich of celebration has been like a sweet dream. The kind of sweet dreams you had as a child. You would wake up having dreamed about the candy tree in your back yard. Candy tree. In your backyard. You ate it and did not get sick at all. These dreams are the very definition of what you first thought the word dream meant.

This recent period in my life has felt like a very real dream. The kind of dream you wake up from not believing it was a dream at all. It’s as if life is circling me and daring to show itself. And all the faces at each event are 500watt bulbs with wine in their hands. Smiling like they can’t help it. And they can’t.  A baby is coming, a son is 22, a friend is turning 60 and the vibe is exactly the same. Friends, family, strangers. Each party was as if it was everyone’s very first party. Everyone was living unashamedly.

And it makes me feel like the earth is waking up and starting again. And yet the leaves are falling and the earth is sleeping for a while. 

Just what I needed to remind me.

Barbara: Oh, I love this, Deb. I love the celebration in it, the appreciation. I love that you finally get a season of joyous occasions and that they are all so lovely and wonderful and fulfilling. It’s funny when life offers up a veritable smorgasbord of events for us to feast on. I’ve had periods of my life like that. I was telling you earlier about getting jobs all in a row: the whole “it rains/it pours” scenario. But I think, after so much tragic and awful rain, you deserve the warm sun and the new buds of discovery. Soak it up, my darling friend. Spring into it!