October 21 2012

The Canvas that is Autumn

Sometimes fall memories are so palpable they push in on my reality and color it with shades of sepia.  There is so much about this time of year that gives me comfort.  Although disliking school with a passion in my later teen years, September and October were always thrilling to me.  Not living close to where I went to school, my summer was filled with neighborhood kids, but when the grass turned crisp and the grasshoppers appeared it was time to put away running bases, freeze tag and backyard tents.  It was time for school and the season that followed.

I have such warm memories of autumn.  I can remember sitting in my Aunt Elaine’s kitchen watching her and my mom chat.  It was a warm and inviting place, playing with my cousins.  Trips were made to Uncles Ray’s farm for produce. My mom and dad would be canning in the kitchen and talking about how someday they would have a farm.  Of course, this did occur, but not soon enough for me.  I always thought that we would move to the country.

  I would wait each year for the appearance of “injun summer” in the Chicago Tribune.  It would be published about the time that we would all be raking our leaves.  Don’t get me wrong, I am all for banning leaf burning, but there is something about the smell of smoldering leaves wafting thru the air on an autumn evening. It was one of those things that brought neighbors together. 

              

And our annual foray to Bell’s apple orchard in Lake Zurich was the non-Halloween highlight of the autumn season.  The smell of a fresh apple, the snap it makes when you first bite into it, brings a yearning for an orchard that has gone the way of so many others.  I can close my eyes and see the bushels of Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Jonathans and Macintoshes.  After our visit the smell of my mom’s kitchen was overwhelming.  Apple pies, apple cake, apple bread and caramel apples.  My grandma would make baked apples and my brother and I would be the recipients. 

My husband and I, of course, created new traditions as our children were born...the pumpkin farms, the weekend to Door County for pumpkinfest and newly discovered apple orchards. I have discovered, as our children have grown and flown the coup, that creating traditions is a continuously changing canvas upon which we splatter new hues depending on where we are in life.  But yet there are times that the pull from the past takes my breath away and for a single moment in time I am transported back to the autumns of my youth.  They are such good memories.

Changing my look

Coffee, cool morning, late summer feel to the air, It is going to be hot today.   I wanted to change the look of my blog but find that I have very limited abilities in this department.  Think I will keep it like this for awhile.  My husband Gary enjoying the view in Ephraim Wi.

I love Just a Pinch!

http://www.justapinch.com/me/luv2cookDeb

My son the Rugby Player

My son the Photographer

http://daniellund.tumblr.com/

My Edison Park August

The dog days of summer

 It brings sweet memories of riding my bike up and down the hills formed by new construction at Peewee Park. I can smell the hot tar being poured into the cracks of the street outside my home. I remember standing with my eyes closed awaiting a cool breeze to hit before a storm and the smell of oncoming rain that would permeate the the air.  The grass was crisp and, when mowed with the push mower, gave off a perfume that could lull me to sleep. I spent endless days doing nothing and imagining everything. I spent those endless days of August longing for the first day of school… my youth in Edison park.

   The busy days of summer were over.  YMCA Camp or, in my earlier years, the day camp at the public school called "Social Center" were only memories.  While friends were on vacation I would sometimes spend my days reading, lying on my bed watching my violet flowered curtains blow in the breeze.  And there was the day dreaming, always the day dreaming.  I was a dreamer in every way.

The trip to 6 corners for my new school clothes would happen every august.  This was always so much fun in my earlier years until somewhere around 6-7^th grade my taste in clothes took a definite turn to the left from my mom’s taste.  There was joy, argument, tears.  I remember the sales ladies intervening, giving advice to both my mom and to me, to find a medium ground.  I can’t imagine that happening today.  But my Mom would listen to them, after all they are the fashion experts and I would listen to them, after all, weren’t they really on my side? And eventually, at the end of the day, I had a working wardrobe for my first day of school …This all happened at Sears.  Then there was the trip to the store for school supplies.  I loved crisp white paper and unsharpened pencils and new pens just waiting to be used.    Not to mention the lunch boxes.

Labor Day weekend was the last hurrah.  I thought the day after labor day was the beginning of fall.  I hated those 90 degree autumn days. The dog days of summer..always waiting for the next season, always waiting.

Deep thoughts for a bright June day

Just read an article about the lack of spirituality of our country. So sad, it is so satisfying to lose yourself to spirituality now and then.  It helps you find your center, your purpose in life.

The way I see it, humankind will always form religious groups.  We are tied together by certain belief systems.  We believe in Jesus as our savior, we believe in not eating meat, we believe in Allah as the one true God, we believe in a homosexual lifestyle, we believe in the power of mother earth, be believe in saving the earth. 

What if the religion that we practice today grew out of people who held certain beliefs to be true, who banded together and made rules and laws to preserve the lifestyle that they had, and as we progressed  towards a more complicated belief system they made up of rules and laws to maintain the status quo.  Maybe the future will bring us new religions based on the wants and needs of the individuals of this century.

Just syain’