Seasons’ fleetings…

leaves on snow

Here in southeast Wisconsin, the first snow came early this season. 

While October’s foliage still stunned with radiant hues, the storm moved in, dropping several inches of wet white stuff — and shaking me out of my ardent embrace of autumn. 

This photo shows the view from my bedroom window that morning. It felt important to capture the reversal of order, the leaves that were dropping onto the fallen snow. 

Perhaps this isn’t all that uncommon and i just never noticed it before. 

But it’s making me think about the suppositions i carry of what is likely to happen next. I’ve learned to welcome the stirring up of settled notions, the upending of unacknowledged assumptions — to keep from becoming too staid.

Let the wind rustle the leaves over the snow.

I would have liked for autumn to hang around a bit longer. But i do also delight in gray skies and the neighborhood layered in white. 

Winter has charms of its own, and the best of them is that it doesn’t last for too long either.

Long overdue…

Hello readers!

I hope this is the last time that i’ll have to express regrets for a long absence.

In my inaugural Ruminations post of December 2014, i explained my reasons for not making the cancer diagnosis a major topic of the blog. Unfortunately, it does make sense to refer to its ramifications occasionally, particularly after i’ve been prevented from posting regularly.

Returning today from the longest sabbatical since i started the blog is just such an occasion…

autumn-haze

Winter is coming. I never used to mind that.

But now with winter’s approach come dismal emotions that accompany anniversaries of diagnosis and treatment.

This November 1st marks three years since the declaration. I call it the great Time Marker.

I am, as far as i know, cancer-free. The subsequent string of severe complications from the treatment appears to finally be over, but has resulted in permanent discomforts and limitations — which is why i am only now getting back to writing. They make the anniversary a bit more challenging to grieve over and move beyond.

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The gift of spring — it’s the thaw that counts…

buds

Just because spring is here doesn’t mean winter is over.

Such is the message nature seems to send with early spring’s warming days but still freezing nights. The poet T.S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month; the delivery of what we are being promised and afforded samplings of comes a bit later than the moment we feel ready for it — and takes longer than we care to be made to wait.

The delay of spring of another sort accounts for why i haven’t posted here as often lately as anticipated, my own elongated ‘April’ starting months ago, and similarly unkind in its aroused expectation and disappointing deferral. I’m referring to my extended recovery from a serious illness, which i wrote about last December. In that post, i explained why the illness and recovery would not be a primary topic for me on this blog.

I recently decided that doesn’t mean i won’t *ever* write about it…     Continue reading