October is a Season of Steadfast Change

 In october you can feel the change in the air.  Every day is different than the one before.  Every Friday night gets dark quite a bit earlier than the one before it. It can be over 100 degrees where one member of the family lives while another is telling you that the temperatures dropped 65 degrees overnight and they have snow.

 Spring flowers get confused and sneak in a few new blooms while fall flowers start to show their glory and the leaves begin to outshine them all.  Fruits are plentiful and free in their abundance but already beginning to over-ripen.  The warm blackberry scented air starts to carry the smell of decaying leaves and fermentation.

"I - L- Y combined in sign language says, I Love You"

 Days that are cold and foggy in the morning leave you sweaty and breathless in the afternoon heat. Kids are back in school but the sense of summer lingers and yet Christmas things are already popping up in the stores.

For months I seem to not sell any of my books.  I carry them with me and chat about them, I write about them and tweet about them and work on the next ones but very little happens.  Then that too, changes.  I have a copy with me and don't mention it, and someone asks me if he can look at it.  Then a week later he tells me, "Well, I have bad news.  I can't give your book back" but that is because he gave it to the school district with the directions to order him a set of 36 for his class and the suggestion that it should be taught by all the 5th grade teachers in the district.  Then while I'm still smiling over that, a teacher from another school mentions that she is using the same book as a read-aloud to her class.  I know it is still baby steps, but that is perfect for Double Time on The Oregon Trail because this huge continent was crossed one baby step at a time.

 So while I welcome fall with jars of home canned blackberry jam and stacks of firewood stored up in the hope of defeating the cold ahead. While I stock up on candles for the inevitable dark, and stroll on the beach in a last celebration of warmth and light - I think about change and progress.  I think that the old, "the more things change the more they stay the same," is proven true once again.

 Every October I feel the same changes happening, new but steadfastly familiar as the earth repeats a pattern ancient and sure.  Every October I turn nostalgic and compare where I am to where I was and where I hope to go.  I work with the kids at school and realize I once taught their parents.  I write my stories and take my pictures and tell the people in my life that I adore them.  I know each October finds a few new people in my life and a few old ones missing, but I carry them in my heart and take the baby steps toward the day when i get to hold them in my arms once more.