Five Minute Friday (on a Sunday Afternoon Turned into Evening) ~ Collect

Fall has arrived and the weather is changing! As a result, we took advantage of a somewhat lower key weekend (where lower key really is a relative term meaning  only had one short work shift, Saturday morning house cleaning, two Sunday School lessons to prepare and teach, sound system set-up and breakdown at church, one small group meeting with food to prepare, our first feverishly-sick-so-staying-stationary-one of the new school year AND five sets of homework) to switch seasonal clothing. Mary Michelle had been coming home from school all week saying her teachers wanted her to start wearing a real coat. It was time!

Now, the storage space under the stairs seems almost echoingly empty...

For years, it seems as though I've collected clothes, shoes, coats, gloves, mittens, etc. Biggers growing out of stuff and if it wasn't immediately passed down to the closet of a younger sib, I'd pack it away in a Rubbermaid tub for littlers to use some future day. Often hand-me-downs arrived on the doorstep from cousins, friends in our church and expat community.... or I'd run across a great deal at Goodwill or Walmart... or Gammie would go on a grandkid clothes splurge.

But now that some of these kids are transitioning to life out from under our roof and littlers (really, only one littler remains) are transitioning to middlers while middlers morphing into to biggers, scatter is becoming my new word. It seems I've spent a life - to anglicize a French verb - ramasse-ing things that I knew would be valuable in days to come. Now, I've entered that season where my collection of tangibles is rightly shrinking - as we pass along, sharing with others those things that we have received. 

Yet, should nostalgia, sadness, regret and loneliness over a much quieter house than it used to begin to predominate ~ all I have to do is remember is that now, I can focus on all those intangibles I've been - and will continue - collecting: memories, relationships... treasures that rust and moth doth not corrupt.

...which reminds me of an Emily Brontë poem ~

Fall, leaves, fall 

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; 

Lengthen night and shorten day; 

Every leaf speaks bliss to me 

Fluttering from the autumn tree. 

I shall smile when wreaths of snow 

Blossom where the rose should grow; 

I shall sing when night’s decay 

Ushers in a drearier day.

So... funny but true. I really did write this in right around 5 minutes. I started, wrote the first bit and was interrupted by life in our house. Then came back after watching the season premiere of my fave TV show (Madam Secretary, if you are wondering), finished and forgot to post - until I sat down at the computer today. Then, I decided to add the photos, because who doesn't love pictures of Fall in Québec!