Season of Transformation

A few weeks ago, Greg called to me from the yard to come look at the way the light was hitting the bougainvillea – a perfect little bunch was glowing brilliantly in the archway of our gate, like a country star taking the stage for a solo in the spotlight.

It’s still warm in Southern California but there’s been a sudden, undeniable shift in season. The air is a little more sharp, but mostly it’s the way the light is falling differently in and around our house. The shadows are bolder somehow. The cobwebs have a more distinct gleam. And when did I stop hearing the call of the doves? Already they’ve made their way farther south for winter without telling anybody.

Even before these almost-imperceptible changes, I had begun to feel transition in the air. Then came the news of a friend's mother passing. Another friend going through a breakup. A shotgun wedding. A decades-long friendship coming to a close. A family of three packed up and moved across the country. The suicide of another. All within a couple of weeks. Relationships are shifting – with each other and within ourselves. We are in a season of transformation. 

Most of my friends are moving into and through our 40’s now and maybe it’s something to do with that, that we are embarking on a new era. Time is showing up. Choices we’ve made in our younger years have taken shape and we are stepping into the light to see it. While some situations we find ourselves in can’t be helped, how we choose to see one another and ourselves in this new light is up to us. It’s complicated though, isn’t it? Our eyes haven’t adjusted. We hold tight to that old light (musty and fading though it is).

Why is it that we can sometimes see and celebrate strangers or newer friends more easily than the ones we’ve carried with us through the years? A trick of the eye, maybe. When we meet someone new, we accept them for who they are after the journey it took to get there. We don’t see the flaws, the stumbles and the bullshit that happened along the way. And what about the way we see ourselves? Sometimes we drag along the corpse of our past self for so long we hardly notice the extra weight.

How we see each other has to evolve.

How we see ourselves has to evolve. 

But how to spot this change? Maybe it’s a bit like that early shift in season; if you’re willing to look, it’s there. It’s there like shadows galloping on the back of new winds, like the embers of stars fading from the night or like shells washing up from the shore. It’s there in the way the light is falling on the faces of our loved ones, it’s there like this very earth in its imperfect orbit. It’s happening slowly and it’s happening all at once. Maybe we’ll decide to look away but I hope we can awaken enough not only to see it, but to celebrate it, for each other and for ourselves.