A Good Day Even With Oil For Dinner

It actually felt like Autumn today. The sky was still sporting its usual shade of grey, but there were breaks in it... breaks that let through splashes of sunlight here and there and twinkled on the few trees that have turned a mustard shade of gold. The air was cool, but sunkissed when not running from the clouds. It smelled like wet leaves, and freshness.

In this teeming mass of a city, nestled down between mountain crests in western China, the clouds get socked in where they can sit for weeks on end. I don't know all of what it takes to haul their masses up and out of the valley but when those powers move, I tell you I lift my head up in sheer wonder and a lot of gratitude. The skin begs to meet the sun and it drinks it in like parched earth.

I love Autumn. It is my favorite season of the year, and in a funny way it sort of reminds me of myself: auburn, freckled, dotted, melancholy, loving the brown earth and subdued colors of decay. I could live in autumn forever. I was so glad to feel a sense of it today, to get just a scent of it in the air and to throw open the doors and windows and wrap my sweater tight around, thinking on Thanksgiving menus and upcoming birthday plans and the good and hard of plugging through these days with little light.

We made it through most of the day, Scout and I, with just a few bumps along the way. She is such a bundle of strong and vivid life forces. She puts as much fervor into hauling herself across a room in rapid speed as she does in vehemently explaining why her proposition should be considered and acquiesced to as she does tearfully apologizing with all the heart she can muster. It is a jumble of emotions for me, her mother as well, feeling at once completely flabbergasted and frustrated and then consumed and overcome by her sweetness and hilarity and perfectly plump, porcelain beauty.

Then she dumped an entire cup of oil into my ready-to-be-served dinner. An entire cup of oil added to a pot or plate of anything (besides the brownie mix that it was intended for) is just plain disgusting. I nearly threw it out until my decidedly more level headed husband suggested that because oil floats to the top, we could attempt to remove as much of it as possible and save our dinner, which is what we did, even though I was sure it wouldn't work.

We then spilled cups of water at the table. This is normal, this is what we do at meals. Every meal. Many times. This is one of the reasons we serve water. Every meal. But somehow, we have not gotten used to it. You would think we would have.

But it felt like Autumn today, and maybe He knows I needed that. There seem to be so many things I bring up to Him lately, telling Him that I need in order for me to go on, or at least go on with a good attitude. Yet, in the absence of much that I think would be good, there are other kinds of goodness going on. Probably things far better than what I imagine would be best. All this gray leads to more love of the light I do think.