Yesterday was a high vegetation day. It was pouring rain, and though we did manage to go to an art museum, otherwise we were reading, watching a very terrible movie or just plain stumbling around in zombie like fashion. Day of the living dead. Now, today, it is sunny and beautiful, and the earth looks half drowned but in a satisfied way. Leaves are strewn everywhere, and I had to watch my step as I walked the dogs, not to slip on wet leaves. This rain makes it official - fall is here and there is no turning back. Yes, we will have some pretty days, but my sandals are put away, a sweater is a must in the morning, and the jackets are out.
My thoughts are turning to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the whirlwind that is fall (this includes many birthdays as well). November 10 is the anniversary of my mother's death, and fall was a season in which she excelled. She could sew costumes, make pumpkin cookies with icing, roast a turkey with heavenly stuffing, set a table, make little snack thingies, sew decorative stockings, trim a tree and bring out the perfect pecan pie with whipped cream. She was animated around the holidays, had high expectations, was often disappointed, and then drank too much and listened to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Her own childhood had been horribly deprived, and she was attempting to make it up to herself, and never quite satisfied. She'd get so excited over the presents under the tree she'd try to open a corner and peek. She was childlike about the holidays, but that wasn't comfortable for me when I was a child. Now my heart goes out to her. One Christmas we went to Hawaii - a huge treat - and she made ornaments out of seashells. I still have some, and when I unwrap them I think of her tenderly, and all that effort to change her story from one of tragedy to one of triumph. I hope she felt she succeeded, but I'm afraid a lot of the time she felt stuck in a place of not being loved enough and being recognized. She was in the middle of 13 children. It's tough to get beyond that sense of being lost in the shuffle of kids and work and struggle. I never understood her until she was gone - she died when I as forty - and I'd like to have said how much I admired her and understood what she made of her life. But I didn't get to. She awoke on a Sunday morning, went in the kitchen and told my father she felt like she was going to up-chuck, leaned over the sink, had a heart attack and was dead in a minute. She died in her kitchen, taking care not to mess up the floor.
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