A MOTHER’S FALL
Fall is in full swing over here and something about it feels extra special. Like the leaves sprinkled on the sidewalks, this fall has been sprinkled with milestones.
I’m typically a summer girl, but after having both of my babies in the fall, I have become head over heels for the seasons. The sensation of change mixed with the comfort of nostalgia. For the past few years, fall has been my nesting season. I’ve found some of my greatest joy in embracing the pull that the chill in the air gives me, to want to get cozy and cuddle close. My time at home with my babies is coming to an end, so this fall I find myself cuddling closer than ever. Holding on with all my might to the now, and never wanting it to pass me by.
Halloween is Andie’s last, first holiday. I remember waddling around trick or treating last year and just praying I could make it around the block without going into labour. I didn’t want to miss a second of Lou’s excitement. Little did I know then, I had ten more days of waddling before she’d make her grand arrival and teach me the way it feels when the greatest love you’ve ever known…multiplies. I brought her home with leaves on the ground, and a few days later we watched our first snowfall together. And now, in a way that I’ll never be able to comprehend, we’ve gone around the entire sun and it’s Halloween again. Yesterday, we stood at the kitchen window and stared together at the glowing maple in the backyard. The years of motherhood are far too short.
It’s also the first time it feels like Lou remembers a holiday. Last Easter she was too young to find anything familiar with this Easter; she was too distracted by bunnies and chocolate. Summer held a few déjà vu moments, but they mostly came from stories we’d re-told her through the winter and not from her own memories. But… as I took out the fall decorations, I pulled out her Halloween books. She was old enough last year to remember how we read Busy Bear, searching for the mouse. How you count down the pumpkins in Ten Little Pumpkins. How you find Mickey and all his friends, hiding behind the secret pages. The seven different faces Mouse paints on his seven pumpkins. It solidified these things we’ve done as parents to build memories and traditions for our children.
I remember when I became a mother, a friend told me that not only will my life be made great, but everything I had before will be made better. For me, those words hold the most truth in the seasons. Often, people are quick to acknowledge that they come with an overwhelming sense of change and though it’s true, they do… that’s just not what I love about them. I love the opportunity to go back in time. Even from my own childhood, I remember the smell of the box of Christmas tree decorations. I remember digging through the Halloween costumes to find all ten witch’s fingers. I remember the sound of my mother sweeping the spring leaves off the back patio, and the click of my Dad’s bike coming up the driveway after a summer morning ride.
It’s those little things, that define a childhood. Now as a mother, my heart is made it’s fullest by knowing that I’m filling the seasons of my own children’s youth, with our family’s very own little things.
I envision a day far ahead of us, when my girls are grown. Perhaps we’re sitting in a coffee shop, warming our hands around a mug while the fall leaves swirl around outside. And we begin to reminisce; about books, or smells, or memories. I hope it always takes me back in time, to right here, right now, and this moment I’m holding on so tightly to.
