The trees are nearly naked now, their last vigilant leaves hanging on for dear life in the November wind.

Lately I see myself in the trees and long to be as apt to change as they are, season to season. Because I need to live where there are seasons, even seasons I hate.

I love summer, when everything is alive and wild and the days are long and we bask in the glow of heat and light.

I love winter, when everything is covered clean with a blanket of white and the twinkling glow of hearth and home.

I love spring, when everything is green, when my fear and doubt are cast out with signs of new life.

I love fall, when everything is vivid and brilliant with abandon.

But I hate these between seasons, when the earth is brown and bare, when the vividness vanishes from the roadsides, when the darkness presses in and there is no blanket of white to brighten our days. It could change tomorrow, or three weeks from now, or it could linger the whole length of winter; I don’t know.

Maybe this is why I need Thanksgiving so badly : to remind myself, leaf by falling leaf, hour by darkening hour, to count the good things, to remember the life that thrives inside of bleak branches, to distinguish a season of bareness from barrenness.

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