October lasted a good long time -- all in orange and yellow/gold. Not hardly a day of cloudcover in the whole month. Then November came along and it was mild, but gone in a couple of breaths. We were busy with old things we found in a house we bought. And then I looked up and it was the last day of November.
That last day, the weather celebrated. Rain tore at the roof and rattled the windows with lovely rivers that shown blue in the twilight. It was rip'roaring ride through some old cowboy town, the weather shooting pistols at the sky. I stood on the porch with the leaking roof (got to get that fixed) and watched lightening in the sky. Once the lights flickered off all over town, but before I could cheer, they were on again.
We get moments, only.
So, alright November, I sort of blinked and missed you. December is a whole 'nother month. December smells like pine and has twinkling lights in it. While November is woodsmoke and walnut shells.
November is periwinkle and brown. December is red and green and full of holly. It also has held breaths in it. I don't know why -- it's a nice month. December used to drag along pleasantly when I was a kid, but then I grew up and it's a blink of a month, too -- here and gone before we have the wrapping taped shut or ripped open again, and certainly before the bows go on.
The reason I like holidays is they slow a time down long enough to take it in. October's waiting for Samhain was delicious! And, December has Mother Night, Solstice, the usual Christmas, the recognized New Year's Eve and in our family, a good sprinkling of birthdays.
But here it is the third of December. Gumdrop lights are edging the rooftops of houses in our neighborhood. They've been blinking since sometime in November, shoving T day out of the way to make space for Christmas. Stores don't have time to sell their cornucopias and the Pagans I know had those going back in September for Harvest time.
I always used November as time to wander through the woods and to write my poetry. And of course, there was always an Indian Summer and a last chance to walk barefoot before the ground decided you'd better not. Now November is National Novel Writing Month, and I didn't even follow through with that.
At my age I can't help wondering how many more Novembers I have. Not as many as I've already known. I can remember so many of them -- I can remember more Novembers than I can Decembers.
Last year, on the last day of November, all of us except Heather walked across the top of the spillway at the lake and down across the deserted beach and across the dry lakebed to the empty campground. Dogs, Buddy and Lola and Rupert, ran ahead of us and circled back again to find us. Our Grandson, then heading for 4 years old, thought he was on an old movie set. He pretended to look for his spaceship and to rescue us.
This year, I'll remember finding old things in an attic, building a fire on Thanksgiving day while the kids were here and hearing Sarah on the phone telling us about the mystery she unraveled in old letters we found in the eaves of the house. And that rain on the last night before December came.
I just stopped a moment to take a stitch to remember November -- a month that smells like woodsmoke and spices and looks like twilgiht.
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