Chapter 33 - The Seasons

When I first wrote to Rett it was winter. I remember looking out the window after I sent that infamous first e-mail and seeing the new coat of white snow covering my backyard. It was hiding that dirty brown half melted snow we see so often in March. At the time I thought "Will winter ever end?" Often we get a new blanket of snow before the spring is awakened, as if to wash away all the dirt from the winter.

Now it is fall. I travelled through all four seasons with Rett. Not long into fall, just a few weeks. But I have travelled so much further than the seasons. It makes me tired to think of all the travelling I have done.

I like fall, not as much as spring, but I do like it. It can be a sad time of year - a time of dying, a time of putting things away, battening down the hatches before the winds of winter roll in. I like it because of the colours, the smells, and the sounds. I am such a tactile person, it is never just one sense that is touched it is a combination of senses. Fall smells differently than spring. It has a crispness and clarity to it, unlike any other season. We tend to make nests at this time of year to prepare ourselves for the long months ahead, and I like nesting.

This fall, unlike any other, I will be making my own nest. I will be creating my own home, the way I want it to be, the way I want it to look. I will be finding my sense of self in my surroundings - not what someone else likes - just me. I am looking forward to the challenge of finding what I like.

It is a different view looking forward rather than backward. I have never looked any further forward than one day. I have never made long-term plans - ever. I couldn't because my life was not my own. It was too frightening to look into the future.

You want to hear something strange? When I did think of myself in the future, I never once saw myself with my husband. Odd how the mind knows those things we don't even know yet. I had never thought about it until lately, when I was trying to picture myself in the future and I realized it really hadn't changed at all. Things are how they should be, how they were always meant to be.

People come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime.