Between Now and Then

 With muted gold and rose striating the indigo, the night sky moves toward dawn.  Predictions anticipate a warmer day ahead – 60’s instead of 40’s.  It is a pendulum I’ve come to expect in these swing days of nature’s indecision between autumn and winter.  Simultaneously reticent to let go and eager to move on, we hover along with the transitional ambivalence; dancing between “there” and “then”.  
 
We are no stranger to the tension.  As one, myself, who abhors goodbyes while simultaneously delighting in hellos, I am easily sympathetic.  How many treasured visits come to an end by moving out from the living room, only to stall in the driveway with one more story, and then another, and only finally one last hug?  How many warm and convivial Thanksgiving gatherings are truncated by Black Friday strategizings.  Staying or going?  Holding or reaching?  Tomorrow tints today which, of course, bears the lingering scent of yesterday.
 
High winds have been foreshadowing blusters on the way, but today the last remaining hose outside will still flow freely, and there is wrap-up work to accomplish with the hives.  We will take, perhaps, a final walk around to see about final winterizing details and then, with little choice, settle into the limbo of this betweenness; alternately freezing and thawing and pondering what other comings we need to prepare for with welcome, and what grips our fingers need to loosen around those of which we need to let go.  If that sounds ominous, it isn’t really. It is simply the nature of things.  We take up; we drop.  We receive; we release.  “When I was a child…,” the apostle Paul contrasted, “…but when I became a man…”. 
 
Yes, as the song observes, “We live our lives between then until now,” but it seems true to me that we likewise live our lives between now and then.  I know the Buddhists will counter that we only have the “now,” and while I agree that the present is the only real place to live, it exists among the broken pieces of the shell of the past from which it broke out, and for all its immanence, is always moving on without staying put. Life, then, as constant motion; undulation.  Going and coming.  Goodbye and hello.  Releasing and embracing.  Sunset, sunrise.
 There are gratitudes to speak aloud, coupled with farewells.  Greetings, as well, though we know not yet to whom to speak them.  Eventually, as is the way with things, it will become clear.
 
In the meantime, we wade into the tidal currents of this day and it’s incumbent ebbs and flows, its grippings and releases – its darkness and, just now, its dawns. There are seed potatoes to order for spring and coop bedding to refresh for winter, along with deck planters to store away.  And time to protect for each other.  Being alongside the doing.  
It will rise to 62-degrees in the hours at hand if the forecast is to be believed.  I’ll just note that the forecast for 7 days hence is for 11-degrees. Goodbye, and then of course, hello.
 
Now, with the fluttering of autumn’s few and last remaining leaves, and, inevitably, then.