By SUE SEIBERT
Last week at the post office I saw an old friend. We chatted for a while, and then I said of the bright, sunny, 40-degree weather, “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”
To which he replied, “If I keep my collar up.”
To that I said, “Yes, but it isn’t hot!”
And it isn’t hot, the Texas heat has gone for the year, and we are blessed with beautiful cool, crisp days and clear nights, with the full moon shining. The harvest moon – that moon about which songs are sung.
Fall is my favorite time of year. I yearn for it, especially during the hot, dry summer days. But right now I don’t have to long for it for a while. It’s here, and with it brings the many changes of the seasons.
A friend on Facebook put it this way, “When I see the leaves turn red on the trees and the geese flying south, I know God may let this old world stay a little longer.”
Further, he said, “God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.”
What a way to put things! Very poetic and very true.
Now is the time to plan for the holidays. We’ve just passed Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day with all the costumes of the first and the prayers of the second and third. And now, too, the clock has changed, and we’ve fallen back for another year, with more daylight in the morning and less in the evening, and our bodies must adjust to that, but that’s OK, too.
Next comes Thanksgiving with family and pumpkin pie and turkey and the trimmings. And to culminate the year, Christmas is just around the corner as we celebrate Christ’s birth, His Mass, and we rejoice in the beginning of another year in our lives.
Our family has many birthdays to celebrate in the next couple of months, and that’s always such a blessing. I believe we have something like six birthdays in November and about the same in December. What a celebration we have this time of year!
As I look out my window each new morning, I see the trees more yellow than yesterday. I hear the acorns fall onto the deck, and I find that all the summer birds have flown away and the winter birds are arriving, especially ahead of each new cold front.
I saw my first robin of the winter this morning, and I had to cast my mind on all the stories of my childhood where the robin was the harbinger of spring. Well, in Texas he comes to us in the fall with his red breast reflecting the colors of autumn leaves.
This is a glorious time of year, and for that I will leave you with another little haiku to reflect upon.
Autumn leaves falling
Horses and goats dance in fields
God’s in His heaven
Sue Seibert is an author, columnist and genealogist and frequent contributor to the Mineral Wells Index and its publications.
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