Sashay Magazine / September 2010 / Harvesting Heart

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Harvesting Heart

There are a lot of editors out there who will write about how much they love autumn—how it’s their favorite season because of the changing leaves and cooler air. It must be an editor/writer thing because fall is my favorite season, too. But the difference for me is that fall is more than a pleasurable shift in the winds.

My mother—a beachcomber who could sit in the sand and gape at the ocean till kingdom come—says I’m a maudlin creature, and she can’t understand why anyone would crave a season that is nothing but a chilly harbinger of death. She’d rather be “dead than dying.”

But if we’re going to compare the seasons to phases of life, autumn is the calmest time. Spring—or childhood—blossoms with a colorful, endearing naiveté. But one who is in the spring of her life wobbles about like a fawn on gangly legs. Innocent and nearest to sinlessness, yes. But she’s also vulnerable, perhaps overly anxious or scared of the unchartered.

Then comes summer, when you’re age 25 to 30 or so, when you’re physically and mentally robust, but emotionally impassioned and often even more confused than ever. Skip ahead to winter. No matter how much peace you’ve made with yourself and others, how happy can you truly be when you can actually hear the ticking clock?

Now back up to fall. Forget mid-life crisis for a minute and consider a second awakening. I’ve seen it happen to my own mother. Since she turned 40 her asthma has abated, her immune system has strengthened, and her body has never been more tone. And her transformation goes beyond the physical. She knows what matters and what doesn’t, strives to cultivate a sense of well being; she’s even more open minded and adventurous.

I guess you could say she’s let her hair all the way down—and when you do that, I think you’ve, in a sense, become real, rugged and refined. When you’re secure, yet free; knowing but still questioning…stretching. It’s when you’re always in the moment, forgetting that the vibrant leaves will soon drop and reveling in their fiery splendor, harvesting the fire in your heart like it will never die.