Adaptation

All alone. There is no young giant asleep upstairs ... there is no husband or daughter or visitor or friend (or foe - if you don't count the resentful cat).

NPR's Morning Edition on the computer.

Very intense dreams last night (I think I might be having everyone else's dreams as well as my own - it can't all be me!)

Six-week check at the doctor's today. It's slightly surreal how much similarity there is between the rigours and triumphs of childbirth, and this somewhat violent and draconian end of fertility - which evidently includes a new kind of birthing all its own.

The annual Michaelmas Fest is coming up this next weekend - I have visions of decorations and program designs in my head. And there are a couple of workdays at the library between now and then.

And school starts this week - for me, and for both of the young giants. (I went shopping yesterday with the younger - and currently skinnier and less bearded - of the two. The poor guy was down to just one pair of wearable pants, and was getting desperate. He's so excited and so nervous and so ready to be in school. Oh - and I do remember I'm supposed to be ready to help with math - I know that, right? I'm not forgetting about helping him with his math, am I? Because math will be a pain. I remember that, right? -- Yes. I remember that.)

And in the midst of it all, the weather has shifted. The perpetually green and watery world outside my windows is starting to take on a golden, reddening, ripening light. This is the ripeness season for my inner self too. And I discover that the ideas have begun their annual migration to other places.

I stand in my landscape, and take stock. This year, nothing is where I left it. Everything has changed. The ground has shifted and my continents are elsewhere - moved around - oceans where there were none before, and scorched earth and deep ash where the volcanoes erupted this year. I need to reorient myself.

Every once in awhile, a thing which is organic - a plant sort of thing, with roots and leaves and fruit in its season - drifts by and finds a new place to be.

These organic things - are they my ideas? my perspectives in life? my assumptions? - they are supposed to be in the ground of my being. Their roots are supposed to be well-rooted, watered-in, and their leaves are supposed to be fanning out into the sun and showers, or slowly turning red and gold and dropping to the earth and sleeping before another season of leaf and flower and fruit will come again. But sometimes they just let go. They move. Fly. Wander.

At this time of the year it is not unusual for at least some of them to let loose of their places and move through the air and space and find a better place to grow. It happens. But this year, I find myself surveying this hillside and that one, this valley and the other, and wondering if every single thing I ever knew for sure is different now.

Adaptation.

I think that's what is happening. Adaptation of species. The ideas for things to write about are still ideas for things to write about, but they've moved. They grow and even thrive where I used to think they would die. The way I want to live - the housework and home comforts, and the job situation and the schooling - it's all still there. But it looks different in this light. I think it might have moved to a west-facing slope.

My life is not being lived at noon any more. And evening has always been my favorite time of day and fall my favorite season. The contours of all the shapes surrounding me are sharper now. The contrast is different. Deeper. I like it here. I don't really understand it yet, but I like it here. I wonder which way's north?