Changing Seasons

It’s finally beginning to feel like winter is coming to New England, as the temperature dropped below freezing for the first time last night. I was the first one home this evening in my hard-working household, so it was my job to get the fire going in our woodstove and warm up the family room and kitchen where we seem to live most of our lives. Fortunately, Pop Moody, the seventy-year-old woodsman who delivers our cord every fall, stopped by on Saturday with his truckload.

I love this time of year. This morning on my drive to work along Lake Quinsigamond, the light hit the trees at exactly the right angle and every leaf seemed to be on fire. The variations in nature’s palette always astound me, especially so in this season. I am a painter as well as a writer, and I’ve often been inspired by and have tried to capture the vibrancy and play of light and color in the surrounding hills.

When I’m painting with words I’m trying to capture a different kind of vibrancy—the energy between two people, and the light and shadows through which they move in their relationship. My stories track the seasons in a marriage—the tender hope and renewal of early spring; the languor and sometimes intense heat of summer; the bittersweet pleasure of fall that urges us to seize the day before the leaves are stripped bare; and the uncompromising honesty of winter, when we can only to turn to each other for warmth and comfort.

There is something both exhilarating and reassuring in the cycles of our lives.