As far back as I can remember, I have loved fall. Not that we had fall in Texas. Not a real New England sort of fall. But as a kid, fall meant back to school, new school supplies and books, and Halloween with candy and costumes. As I got older, fall in Texas meant the Texas Renaissance Festival, Ever After and Hocus Pocus. Fall also meant Thanksgiving. And after fall, of course, came Christmas! Tree Day! Tamales and Wassail! Lights and presents!

When I moved to Boston, I experienced real fall, followed by real winter, and then the stunning miracle of a real spring, and the horror of New England’s short summers. It was all new, and exciting and glorious and terrifying. And as I started new work, and began to settle into a new routine in a new place with this new weather, the seasons began to reshape themselves a bit from what I had known as I grew up and progressed through school. Summer was no longer the rest period between semesters and theater seasons. The Renaissance Festival was already a thing of my past. And while I still had Halloween in all its glory with ghost tours and Halloween truffles at the chocolate shop, and my favorite movies, for a few years I didn’t really have Thanksgiving. Christmas became a time of frenetic, exhausting work, and then a long flight and a period of hibernation at home in Texas. Deep winter in January and February became a hunker down and tighten your belt sort of time, until spring brought back work and a steady rise in activity straight through again until Christmas.

And around things went. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter*. I got used to the way things had become, and I clutched onto those touchpoints throughout the year. The traditions I carried through and the patterns of the year became lifelines as personally I felt myself beginning to spiral away.

I reached a real low point at the end of 2016 and by moving apartments and switching my work around a little, I began to head in another new direction. Another season.

This year has been another year of shifts. I’ll reflect more on that when I write my year in review, but suffice it to say, I am finding myself now with some free time, sitting in my chair, cat in lap, next to our Christmas tree (tamales, wassail, and decorations tonight!!!), looking back and looking ahead, and thinking about seasons and holidays and traditions.

It is ever so easy to make a choice, fall into a pattern, and then begin to assume that this is now what must be done because this is what has been done. I have invested this many days, weeks, seasons, years into this endeavor, and so, because I have built it, it must stand, and I must stay. But if I have learned anything from the seasons here in New England, it is that nothing stays for long. The summers will boil, but then the nights will slowly become more crisp and the leaves will fall. And there will be chill winds and snow, but that only lasts so long as well before the yellow crocuses poke their heads back up through the frost and the sun begins to shine a little more warmly. The bushes and trees become fuzzy and green. And then in three weeks, everything has bloomed, and the flowers have fallen, and the deep green of summer sets in again.

We have not yet been ice skating on the Frog Pond this year. And this is my seventh winter in New England, and I have still never built a snowman. Or gone sledding (though we did finally go snow tubing last March). There are only so many tomorrows and next weeks until the season has turned again. The apples are only on the trees for a month, and so every year I make time to go apple picking. While the first 24 days of December seemed interminably long when I was a child, the older I get, the faster they go by, and so I stopped working at a job that required 60 + hours a week in December because I know it is more important to me to get a tree and decorate it, make cookies, arrange thoughtful gifts, and be present in the season with my friends and family.

I appreciate each season here in New England because of the other three. Lemonade tastes so sweet in the summer in part because I don’t drink it when it’s twenty degrees in January. The Thanksgiving feast tastes so lovely in part because it is only eaten once a year. But Thanksgiving this year, with my family all gathered around the table together, was extra sweet in part because we went six years without gathering, and so I was even more aware of how much it meant to me that we could.

In my first six and a half years here in Boston, I’ve tried out new things, gotten stuck in a rut, and started trying new things again. In all that trial and error, I have learned a bit about which things are important for me to continue to carry along with me, to make time for, and which things I can let go. I know I will continue to figure that out, and that the things I carry along may change over time. But right now, with what I know in this moment, I can choose to make time for those things I know are important to me now. That may mean it is time for other things to fall away, but, who knows, they may come back around again, or something even better might take their place.

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*Here are two of my favorite poems that come to mind when I think about seasons. The first my college poetry teacher scoffed at me for choosing to memorize and recite in our class, saying it was a “children’s poem.” I think it is beautiful and timeless. The second I have always loved, but even more now that it so vividly conjurs up for me the feeling of February in Boston.

anyone lived in a pretty how town

e. e. cummings, 1894 – 1962

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.

women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

The Darkling Thrush

Thomas Hardy, 1840 – 1928

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.