By Mike Haskins
This time of year the red, orange, and yellow are putting on the last act of their brilliant show. The light is changing. Winter looms.
Some of us feel the changing of the seasons profoundly, and I don't mean the weather.
If you read this publication, chances are you've taken a look around, and at yourself, and realized that you have changed seasons. Fall is the place on life's calendar where you now reside.
When we are in the spring of our lives, there is no real appreciation for it. The first green of childhood. Days that pass without our notice, and time, something we're just learning to tell. Not a specter over us, and not something we place any value on.
School days and the after school. Bedtimes, and ways around them. Each day mashing into the next as we tumble toward the days that really stand out. Thanksgiving with its food, football, and cousins. Christmas with its lights, music, the tree. And of course the anticipation of the green, red, silver and gold paper, ripped from packages that make dreams come true.
And our birthdays. The absolute quest to hear that we're another year older. So much so that when we're asked our age, we answer almost 10, or 10 and a half. In just two years I'll be a teenager. We reach for, and can't wait, to be older.
When summer finally comes, it's payoff time. We have freedom, a car, and where you actually are or where you're headed is known only to you. Before you could be tracked on your phone. (I actually feel a little bad for today's teenagers.)
For many there is college. Then working every day. Yes, it's monotonous and hard. But we are climbing. We may wince a little as 30 settles in and we see our 20's in the rear view. We don't panic, though. The sun is high, and summer goes on forever. There's no way to know how fast 50 comes. So fast that we only worry about 40… if we only knew.
It doesn't happen overnight, but you wake up one day and your kids are grown. And just as you're getting settled with that truth, they're gone. They have entered their summer.
But wait a minute. Just hold on. How can the kids be in their summer when I'm still in my summer?
Welcome to fall.
Back in the 1970's, the phrase "middle aged" became popular. It was mostly about men who began to question their lives, their careers, and their mortality, and often changed them radically. Sports cars and sideburns and younger women seemed to be the treatment. They called it "middle aged crazy."
What's funny to me is how anyone knows when middle age is. My dad died at 63, which technically made him middle aged at, say, 35.
I turned 63 this year.
My dad never saw my kids. The son I named after him was born seven months and five days after his death. He missed a whole lifetime, really. And he didn't feel young anymore.
I do.
A couple of Fridays ago, I picked up my eleven year old daughter from school. She was feeling herself. It was the night of her first middle school dance, at seven, and she started getting ready at five. And as she did, for the first time, I got a glimpse of the woman she will be, all too soon.
She's going to need me to lean on, even if she doesn't know it. My job is to look out for her, and to help her get to the place where she wants me, but doesn't need me.
To do that, I have to be here: healthy, present, and excited for what's ahead.
I have two grandkids too, three and a half and nearly two. My fall is intermixed with their springs, and I want to see every one of them come into their summer. I want to be a grandparent with energy and joy, still relevant, so that when my older kids' seasons come, they've seen how it's done.
So making it to this season isn't an accomplishment, as I see it. It's an amazing blessing, and I'm grateful to be here at 63, hoping for many, many more birthdays.
The fall of our lives isn't about what's past, or gone from us. The colors of our lives, like the trees, are brightly ablaze. We have come to a place of greater understanding. We know that a phone call or a lunch with a dear friend is nothing to rush through. We've learned that saying "I love you" is never something you'll regret. We know the difference between "have to" and "get to," which is the key to life. And this skin we are covered in is a place we feel more comfortable in now than ever.
It is also a time for change, and it's common to make a fist against it in this season. But don't forget that all throughout our springs and summers we embraced it. We counted on change so we could meet that person. Having babies. Leaving this community for that one. Making a home somewhere new. We weren't skeptical of change. It was a tool we used to rise.
I talk with friends, and read the words of people coming to grips with where they are, trying as we all do to define ourselves, to clarify what it means to be us, as the leaves meander from the branches to the ground. And in words unspoken, we wonder if we're close to the same end. The truth is, we just never know, and that's okay. The temporary is what makes this state of being alive so valuable and precious.
So my encouragement is this: don't live in fear and worry. Live in the experiences you've had and the ones still to come, in valuing where and who you are, and unburdened by the climb.
If I may quote one of my favorite characters in literature, Augustus McCrae of Lonesome Dove: "It's not dyin I'm talkin about, it's livin."
When I write a birthday note to the many young people in my life, so many of them turning 30 or thereabouts, as well as my two oldest kids, I'm fond of the line, "Your life is now."
The light is changing. Our life in fall is now. Let's live it… in color.
