The Already, and the Not Quite Yet

After a tumultuous tug-of-war, the seasons have reached a kind of detente, establishing a fragile "demilitarized zone" between the crisp mildness of autumn and the bitter cold of winter.  While shoveling and parkas have been prematurely pressed into service, it is too soon to store the short sleeves.  It snows, but it also melts.  We've had our milky clouds, but also our melting sun.  Every day is a surprise, but the suddenly slowed motion after a few tumultuous weeks enables a closer attention to the subtleties of change.

The leaves have fallen but the grass remains green.  The ornamenting pumpkins have sunken into themselves, but the solstice remains weeks away.  The bare ground in the chicken yard oozes underfoot with yesterday's rain, but hardens with the overnight freeze.  It is a seasonal, climatic alternation between "neither one" and "both/and."  Nature, indifferent to the ambiguity, goes about its work with patience and equanimity.  Autumn and winter, like our two beloved dogs, may tussle on occasion, but more beloveds than adversaries, they will eventually work out the transition to their mutual satisfaction.

I rather enjoy these ambivalent days of no longer autumn and not quite winter.  There is yet space for gratitude unencumbered with mittens and balaclavas.  We can walk without bracing; work without layering; collect the mail without counting the cost; drive without death-gripping the wheel.  We have shopped and decorated and made plans for the holidays ahead, with the sense that it's all premature, even if the calendar disagrees.  It's quieter, but yet lively.  We've moved deeper inside ourselves, but the soul is still actively hunting and gathering like the busy squirrels outside.

Studying in school the major periods of time, I remember wondering how everybody knew when the Middle Ages ended and the Renaissance began.  As if the character of the world shifted with the calendar's fresh page.  As if "poof," we've moved on.  I know now that it doesn't happen that way.  Life is "fits and starts."  Change is both slope and plateau.  There would have been signs that something tectonic was shifting, but surely the labels followed a rearview assessment rather than a morning's discerning view.

On a more local scale we were certain that winter had descended a few weeks ago by virtue of a series of sub-zero days and snow.  And we were certainly wrong.  The birds are yet present, though their eyes are glancing south.  The wind has not settled on the north, though it is leaning in that direction.  My thermals and flannels are near at hand.

But not quite yet.  These are liminal days with their own stories to tell and their own wisdom to teach.

Like patience.
Like humility.
Like the sense to prepare but the mindfulness to indulge.
Like gratitude.
Like the centering grace to take nothing for granted.
Like a few more glorious days in between.

Fall will fall away, and winter will settle down around us.
But not yet.

Not just yet.