My Complicated Relationship with Fall

My Complicated Relationship with Fall

by Penny Hunter

I’m surrounded by autumn people. And I’m the kind of person who tightens my grip on the last days of summer like a kid clutching a lollipop. I love everything about summer. So, each year as autumn approaches, I get more than a little sad. As the mornings are cooler and the days get shorter, historically, I’ve lamented.

I don’t think its just the changing of the seasons, I think its deeper than that. Most people who know me know I love sharing life with others. I love being outside. Working hard. Planting, cultivating, harvesting. I love seeing things spring to life. Some of that might be my attempt to connect to the things my mom cared about as I process her absence in my life.

Growing up in a home headed by two alcoholics, I was desperate for some kind of stability and rhythm. I always dreaded sundown because as a young girl, I would be faced with the scariness of nighttime alone taking care of my little brothers. Of course, the fall and winter just punctuated this anxiety as nightfall came earlier.

During the summer, my mom and dad were home a little more often rather than being gone on a drinking spree. When home, my mom most often was outside tending her irises and roses. She would rather sit under the hawthorne tree than inside the house. We always had a large vegetable garden and summer days when my parents were home seemed almost normal. We would have fish frys, fill Kerr jars with fruit to enjoy later, grate cabbage to fill the crocks for sauerkraut, and we would pickle almost any vegetable from the garden. As the fall approached, these activities ended as we went back to school and mom and dad went back to their routine of being gone for days at a time. As an adult, I’ve been able to reckon with this animosity toward fall and more clearly identify the genesis of it. That has been helpful and healing. As the first tinges of yellow hit the aspens in Colorado the past few years, I’ve begun looking for beauty where in the past I may have only seen the impending dark days of winter. While I haven’t completely made my peace with the end of summer, I have found some joy in the spiciness of fall. Sunflowers stretching to the sky. Tasty melons at the end of the harvest. A little more time to nest with those I love.

I have rarely regretted being generous. When I have been regretful, it is usually because I was generous with expectations attached. Not open-handed, nostrings-attached generosity.

- P e n n y H u n t e r

Penny Hunter

If you’re interested, you can request to work with Penny, be coached by Penny, or listen to the podcast and read the blog visit www.pennyhunter.om