The leaves they are a colouring, the wind, it is a gusting, the spiders they are a hanging off my windows. It must be Autumn.
Autumn is ok really. It gets a bad press because people are annoyed because Boots has got its Christmas presents out. People are wandering around muttering "It's only September" and are refusing to join in the general merriment at the Garden Centre where Christmas Joy is already full blown - if the light-up, back-flipping Santa Garden Sprite is anything to judge by.
So Autumn is the bit between Summer when we were all quite wet for a lot of it and Winter when we are all quite wet again but need the heat on as well. It is the time when the telly bucks up a bit because we didn't need good telly in the summer when we were all rowing down rivers and drinking Pimms in the evenings. Now, the nights are closing in and we need the X Factor to bring us hope for the future. (I have never seen the X Factor - I shouldn't judge) It is therefore a time of transition and change and moving on and lots of other transitional words.
We are transitioning a bit here at Martha Towers. We are officially "Empty Nesters" now - at least until Christmas. You are supposed to fall into one of two camps as an "Empty Nester". Either you phone your child three times a day and beg them to come home or you paint their bedroom in a neutral kind of colour and rent it out to a student called Juan. I don't think we are either. I am really pleased that they are moving on. I wouldn't want it any other way. It is their time. I enjoy lots of the new things. Small ironing piles, being able to put bacon in pasta dishes, not hearing size twelve shoes trying to creep in at 4am. HOH and I have enjoyed just thinking about us. It has been lovely.
Yet there are friends missing from the house. There are gaps. We miss them. And, cliched as it sounds, I am wondering what I am actually for? If you get my meaning. (Please don't send anyone round. I am not balancing on a ledge or anything) But I know, I have to find the next stage. Nothing dramatic. No juggling, back packing, entering Bake Off. Just the next piece of thing.
“When the time’s ripe, I answer you.
When victory’s due, I help you.
Isaiah 49
Oh dear, we fell into the 3rd camp - we turned their empty bedrooms into a sewing room, and a recording studio!! When I went to Uni, it was two months before my Mum stopped setting 4 places at the table for meals, and then burst into tears realising I was away!! Avoid drastic, dramatic action - you are right to take at least a term to wait on the Lord [sorry, that sounds super spiritual, I apologise- just been away on a Christian Conference] And YES the best thing is realising that you and HOH have the house to yourselves again and you can rediscover the freedom of the pre-children years. Trouble is, you have less energy than you did back then. At least you can snuggle up together knowing that you are going to be interrupted by noisy teenagers
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