A Change of Season

I put away Cate's summer clothes today - most of them, at least. A few pairs of shorts, a few short sleeve shirts remain. I am an optimist. Out came the box from the bottom of her closet, a box filled with adorable dresses, some gifts, many hand-me-downs, a few I could not resist. Dresses that hung in the air like unspoken promises those last weeks of waiting for her. I was surprised at the emotions that welled in me when I pulled them out today. A familiar wave of anxiety and longing. So much was unknown when I first tucked the hangers through their tiny arms and hung them in the closet of an uninhabited room. Would they fit? Would she like them? Would she ever be ours? The empty dresses, the closest I could get to her, the hanging of them a suspension of fear, a sign that I knew she would come.

Six months later, a funny girl sits at the end of the bed. The room is cluttered with socks and dolls and diapers and books. It is loud with her unending chatter. I look at the dresses now and know which colors will highlight her beautiful complexion, can imagine her little bobbed head, can see the way the skirt will move as she runs and jumps and dances on her stout and growing legs. I pick up an empty dress and pull it over her head. "Cozy!" she shouts! "Mine cozy!" And I hug her tight as she laughs and twists away.

I have started getting up at sunrise. I had thought to make a cup of coffee, take a breath and gather my thoughts before the start of the day - a stolen moment of time alone to consider the changing leaves just outside my window, the way the fog lies heavy in the hills, how the wooden floor has grown cold. Alex has taken to getting up with me. I pushed away the frustration that was my initial reaction to his early morning presence, and was happy in my heart today that I had let it go, that no sign of it had seeped into our routine. "Thank you for getting up so early to have a special time with just me, Mommy," he said. Together we have watched the pink sky change. Together we gather our thoughts for the day or enjoy an unrushed moment. Our season too has changed. He is a kindergartner, no longer only mine, off to spend the better hours of his days learning to sit and stand and listen and whether or not school lunches are edible or nap times fun. I am left with the lesser hours - the wearisome, overtired hours that follow the bubbling report of school that day. But these dawning moments are ours alone.

Yesterday's time brought us the unexpected wonder of watching our Lazarus of a caterpillar change into a chrysalis before our eyes. He'd hung in his tell-tale "J" all night. We ran down expecting to find the chrysalis. Instead, we found him just starting to move, retracting himself from his own skin to reveal the chrysalis beneath. Not many people will ever witness this. Many wait and watch, but few actually capture it. But Alex and I did. Despite my previous statements, it was worth the natural disturbance. And we will send him on his way to Mexico in a week or so.

And for the garden. The garden has been our greatest treasure this summer, culminating with the opening of our sunflowers last week. We had disappointments. Some animal dug under the fence and ate every yellow squash just as it reached maturity. The lettuce and beets didn't amount to anything. But we have had surprises too. A tiny watermelon growing, though we didn't plant watermelons. Gold and yellow tomatoes when we only anticipated red. A bumper crop of butternut squash and cucumbers and peppers and just the unending joy of watching Cate and Alex's faces every time they found something waiting to be harvested. And the rutabagas are still growing. Rutabagas. We had to have rutabagas.

We celebrated the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival on Saturday. In China, it is believed that this moon is the fullest, the brightest of the year. Special moon cakes are eaten. Stories and lore about the cakes, the moon surround the celebration. Last year, we celebrated on Plum Island. We had only learned about Cate days before. We sat together on the beach, we three, and watched a perfect moon rise over the Atlantic. We ate buttercookies I passed off as mooncakes to Alex, who had begged for them for weeks. I lingered on, gazing at the moon, long after Steve and Alex had returned to our cottage, wondering if this new face, this new name that was my daughter was staring at it too. I wrote her name, Wei Xi, in the sand and watched as the tide washed it away, willing it to carry the love and joy in my heart to her, half a world away.

This year, the moon could not break through the cloudy sky. We sat around a little fire in our own backyard and lit a lantern in a tree. Cate laughed and played with friends and family who unexpectedly joined our little festival and made it complete. Alex took one bite of a real mooncake bought at an Asian market by a friend and spit it on the ground. "This isn't like last year's!" he said and ran off to join his sister and friends. And he was right. It wasn't like last year. Like the moon, our life has come full circle. And while we don't always see it through the clouds, it's at its fullest, it's brightest.

And while I hate to see the summer go, nature's glorious send off has its own beauty. The pinks and whites and reds giving way to golden and purple. The touch of fire at the tips of the leaves. The deep brown stalks that remain after the flowers have faded away. Tonight we built a small fire in the fireplace, just to take the edge of the chill. The children were sound asleep in dark rooms by 7:30 and the light of the nearly-full moon pours in our windows.