remember (verb)— to be able to bring to one's mind an awareness of someone or something that one has seen, known, or experienced in the past, and sometimes (in a mystifying way) it’s tied closely to anticipating something that is coming.

 

It’s the first cool Sunday of autumn. Mid-September, and the sky is folded clouds in shades of grey. The trees are mostly green yet, but there are a some—maples, and a few birches—that have begun their slow-motion, seasonal burn of red and yellow. The sounds of crickets and cicadas, a last call of summer, come in the windows on a cool breeze, their sounds blending with those coming from the TV: chanting crowds, shrilling whistles, and droning football commentary. It brings back memories of similar days from my childhood, where I’d leave them behind and run outdoors to games and friends, the hiss and smack of the front door closing behind me just as I reached the porch step to leap off. But I could always tell how the Packer game was going, based on the yells or cheers coming from the all the houses along the street with their own cracked-open windows.

 

Today, it’s just me watching. Or listening, really. The smell of bread baking fills the house as I chop carrots and mushrooms and onions for the first “Soup Sunday” of the season—a tradition Eric and I started back when it was just the two of us in our dear little apartment in New York. Now, I cook while kids play and baby naps, and it may not seem like much, but the way the past & present come together in this moment fills my soul with an easy joy.

 

It's the beginning of fall, and already I can feel the tug toward winter. We’re in the time of golden days, when the harsh heat of summer has left, but before November ushers in the bitter cold of winter. I can’t help the little thrill of excitement when I think of what’s to come. All the goodness of autumn, yes: crunchy leaves and bonfires; apple picking and pies; cozy sweaters and soft, worn flannel. The beauty and extravagance of leaves at last showing the splendor of their true colors, glowing in contrast against a grey sky or set afire by the sun shining out of the highest blue. 

 

But I love what comes after, too, when the colors arereplaced by brown and grey. The cold seeps in, and darkness comes earlier and earlier. Bare trees, shorn fields, chill wind… no more harvest warmth to cheer the heart in the absence of summer’s brightness. As the obvious beauty falls away, other things come into sharp focus. September and October are the wide beginnings of an anticipation that narrows as the season progresses: they are the first things to set the tone for Advent, and for Christmas. A harvest time of Eden-like bounty is gradually replaced by a fall into the barren cold of early winter. Each year, as the distractions of the natural world are stripped away, I find myself looking toward Christmas, and as I do the hope of Christ’s coming seeps backwards, through Advent, until it reaches me where I stand now in the kitchen. Stirring soup and breathing in the smell of baking bread. Watching the trees let go the first of their bright leaves. Feeling a thrill of hope at this change of seasons.