Somewhere Up Ahead

July brought with it a fit of urgency, bordering on frantic, that rolled out through all of August and into early September — everything pressing, everything in demand, everything rising to a fever pitch. Like thundering horses my mind could not stop and my body could not sit still. The intense heat of the summer matched my frenzy and each day before dawn I would climb out of bed, tired but unstoppable. 

I worked a full-time 9 to 5, plus a part-time job after hours and on weekends. I simultaneously cared for our daughter who was not yet in school and had only just turned 2 in the midst of my summer tumult. 

Weekends were packed with a different kind of doing but packed to the brim nonetheless. We spent as many hours as we could going to the river, filling ourselves with bowls of castelvetrano olives and slices of Tuscan cantaloupe and prosciutto. We picked blackberries from the bushes and washed them in the river before devouring them. I drank more coffee than I should have and had many bottles of sparkling water to boot. I moved through this overgrown garden of unrest filling myself with everything in sight as if intoxicated, but it was also joyful and I was soothed by the feeling of pressure and purpose and hunger. 

As summer came to a close we ended our 6-month stay with family and began our move into the backhouse of a friend’s property — a small home surrounded by trees with a fenced-in vegetable garden and a skylight in the ceiling that reveals a glowing abyss of stars at night. 

The week of the move, both jobs, by total coincidence, came to an abrupt and unexpected end. Remi had just started preschool and I was stunned by this sudden shift into unmoored time — a bizarre and unfamiliar landscape in which one could actually accomplish things in an orderly one-at-a-time fashion and still have time to rest in between, if one wanted. I, however, wasn’t ready to let go of the frenzy. There was much to be done. So I poured myself into unpacking and applying for a new job and cooking extravagant meals and arranging bouquets of flowers to contrast the stacks of brown moving boxes.

That’s when I was hit by the first cold of the season. It seemed immediately obvious that the universe, Mother Nature and my own body had conspired overnight to say “Stop. Just stop. Hold your thundering horses for just a damn minute.” To which I responded, “I mustn’t stop because if I stop I might slip into some kind of lazy realm from which I’ll never return” to which they said, “Too bad.”

So, for a few days during school hours I laid in bed with a stack of books and miso soup, only occasionally rising to the kitchen to take a spoonful of honey. During that time the weather changed – the mornings turning gray and muted, nights becoming clear and crisp. The clouds now sitting low on the mountaintops, wispy and smoke-like. I did what I could to be still. The world around me changed and I didn’t try to stop it.

Seems like wise people are always saying to be in tune with the season you’re in; to eat accordingly, to find a complimentary rhythm in body and in energy, to create rituals around it. I thought about how every time I hear this, I’m fully on board but then find it somehow unrealistic for my life – a luxury I can’t afford. I’m living moment to moment with a 2-year-old. I haven’t had two thoughts to myself lately, let alone the time to plan an homage to autumn. 

Maybe that’s not true though. Maybe that’s not what it’s about and I’m missing the point entirely. Maybe it’s about a subtle shift – a leaning into what is laid before us. Like how your body will move how it wants to when a song you love comes on the radio – it’s involuntary, it’s instinctive. 

Up north it’s growing colder by the day, a far cry from the easy L.A. winters I’ve grown so used to. As a true summer baby, I usually dread the departure of the warmer months but this time something feels different. My cold came and went and something in me recalibrated. Not a full surrender, but a subtle acceptance – a gentlemanly tip of the hat to the new season. A letting go of the doing doing doing, and the thinking thinking thinking.

Last night I did the dishes a little more slowly than usual. I let the water run over my hands, warming them and steaming my face. Outside a fog settled all around the trunks of the trees and the light wrapped itself around the moon into a glowing rainbow – a moon dog, distinguished and gentle.

As for ritual, I did buy a new Dutch oven for cozy winter soups and stews. I also bought packets of California poppies and native wildflower seeds to plant along the garden fence – a little wink to another season to come, another season waiting to greet us somewhere up ahead.