Does Fall Have Its Own Poetry? A Snapshot of My Life Right Now

Leaf piles and new rhythms: Snippets and photos of finding joy at home

We had our first frost warning of the Fall last night. Not bad for October. I stepped outside a clipped a few roses offering late blooms. We moved shrubs and flowers around this summer, planted new things in our yard, and the roses have thanked us for it.

The driveway is covered now.

The stamped concrete is hidden underneath fallen leaves and walnuts the size of baseballs. When the delivery man arrives in his windowless white van, they pop and crunch under the wheels, the sound of muted fireworks peppers the street.

They're fun to kick at and throw. Can you hit that tree trunk on the first toss? Sophie learned the hard way when a neighbourhood boy threw one that connected with her eye socket.

I ran to find my sweet girl in tears, walnut juice and blood covering her face like war paint. She bears the mark of a child who seizes the outdoors as it's meant to be seized: a wild garden to tame and explore.

The leaves are just turning, they frame the outdoors with yellow edges. Nature is pretending the trees are clouds, and the dying leaves the silver lining, a reminder that life is so good but fleeting and the last moments hold something precious, important: an offering.

Sophie gets it. Let the leaves fall! We'll pile them, move them, jump in!

Retail spaces turn with the season

The stores don't know what to celebrate.

Halloween decorations shout and taunt baby Jesus and the angels from opposing aisles. Fanged, open mouths and ghoulish eyes strike contrast to the cheerfulness and innocence of the Nativity.

I'll take the glitter and holly and splendour of Advent over Halloween's horrors every day. Our kids are following us there too, which is a relief.

It's fun to ooh and ahh over the snow globes. They're old enough now to lift fragile decor off the shelf without causing parental conniptions. I lunge toward potential retail carnage and in-aisle tragedy much less now—reaching to prevent smashed glass and broken ceramics.

They’ve never actually wrecked anything in a store, a credit to the generational hovering passed down through ancestors, dating back to the time when The Hudson's Company opened its first retail store.

William has decided when he retires he will collect Nutcrackers.

The sentinels are out in full array and they dazzle. It's not even Canadian Thanksgiving and they are battle ready and at attention. This year they sport an range of styles: suede, velour, knitted sweaters, shellac, gold spray paint.

We could spend a fortune. A debit to generational wealth.

New rhythms emerge

Fall days take on new rhythms. With school in full swing and Fall programs launched, we shuttle between karate, indoor soccer, and birthdays.

Schoolchildren, it turns out, are born in the Fall months and we are invited to celebrate them.

We create our own rhythms too. The patterns create new family traditions. On weekends we each pick something for the family and rotate selections week-over-week: someone picks a favourite meal, one a dessert, another picks a movie, one picks a board game. Then we gather throughout the weekend to experience these things together. It's an intentional, purposeful way we're enjoying each other and our interests and curiosities. We try new things and favourite things, together.

Somehow it reinvigorates us, a way to turn over the week and begin again, the way a tree shakes off its leaves and pushes them out again year-over-year. To all things there is a season, even home life. Even these weeks we’re allotted, crammed as they are with activity and routine. We must lay them out in full array, let them dazzle too.