Falling

Now we return. We fall back into a familiar routine where time carves our daily path through which our lives flow. The rain started falling today, just as I returned to school to prepare my room for students next week.

The once familiar now finds its way back to me: a sweatshirt or light jacket become options in the evening for a dog walk. Long pants feel foreign to my shins, but remind me of colder days to come.

We fall into thinking about our days differently. Now we have tasks and school and work instead of free time and whimsical destinations. We focus our energy on planning and working on the things we can see approaching rather than searching out experiences from moment to moment.

It is not as glum as it sounds. There is comfort in routine and an ability to work hard knowing that windows of time each day are limited. We appreciate our walks and playtime knowing that they are more limited yet still important enough to confiscate precious minutes from our days.

Fall is a time for the Earth to display a beautiful finale of colors and gasps of vibrant life before dropping into a frosty slumber. Following nature's cue, we, too, grasp for those final moments of summer's glory that will sustain us most through the hardening of the ground and chilling of fingertips.

We bid the sun pleasant dreams a little earlier each night now and find ourselves dreaming in beds crowed by a couple more blankets not there a week ago. While we search out our long socks and warm coats for the coming months, we give thanks for the sunburns and bug bites that act as physical reminders that we did indeed seize the day and have now survived the freefall of summer. We now await the full arrival of fall with thoughts of crunchy leaves and evenings of quietness only broken by the final warm, blustery gasps of summer winds.