My funky feet are uneven and so is the ground, in this old house and out on our dirt road. It’s fall, and, with osteoporosis, I cannot afford to fall. I was already feeling caught in a pretty predicament, when our farmer started spreading manure while I was porching. Poo and porching—potent!
Fall feels like the cusp between an old year and a new one. It’s back to school time. COVID restrictions are easing, whether they should be or not. Old friends are back from vacation. New friends are showing up. To hug or not to hug is an existential question. Life’s teachers are making themselves known. Absentee ballots are being mailed for the November election. “Choice” lingers in our language and lives.
Itzhak Perlman has famously said, “Sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.… This has been my vocation: to make music of what remains.” He was referring, of course, not only to his wheelchair but to a broken string on his virtuoso violin in the middle of a concert. I find solace in his wisdom, perseverance, and art.
As the weather turns with the leaves, I am choosing to Zoom rather than to porch. I feel like a grandmother tree, sending out messages through fungi in the soil to encourage the forest that nourishes all life. Marge Piercy’s poem, “Seven of Pentacles,” keeps coming back to me in Graceful and mischievous ways. “Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.”
Fall is a season of abundance and preparation, a time of harvest and hoarding. It’s apple season in Vermont—ripe off the tree, in cider, applesauce, pie, bread, butter, brown betty, and crisps. Deer come down the hillside to munch on lunch. A happy skunk (the best kind!) waddled up the stone steps outside my bedroom window before running for cover to gorge itself on bright red rose hips. And yet, the Vermont Foodbank sees increasing food insecurity in the state. There is mostly negative noise on the news.
The autumnal equinox glimpsed the light in balance, even when the world feels off-keel.
As I accept my physical limitations, I summon my courage to connect friends who are living love out in the world. I am beginning to see the ripple effects of my Graceful Mischief, and for me, that is an abundant harvest. It heals my heart. In choosing to create community, we help to weave warmth in anticipation of first frost. There is plenty to share when it comes from the heart.
Meanwhile, I watch very carefully where my feet fall.