October

Mercury falling

I rise from my bed

Collect my thoughts together

I have to hold my head

....

She brighten my day

She warm the coldest night

The hounds of winter

They got me in their sights....

- Sting

I have a strange relationship with October. 

 I truly look forward to it all year.   I crave the clarity and crispness of the shifting northern wind that bears undertones of field fires and fallen leaves stirred underfoot, its breezes nearly detectable to the tongue by the taste of the air.  My dress becomes more concealing and reflective of autumn's colors and quality of light, as if I could better attune myself to the season and accept its finality by fading into its warm palette.  I bust out the tin pans and bake whatever stirs my imagination. I always take long walks, short naps, and am constantly boiling a cauldron of this-and-that soup to sip during rainy day Harry Potter marathons.

Fall is easily my favorite season.... on paper.

Really, it's difficult.  Less stressful than grown-up Christmastime, but moodier.  I have trouble being alone, even though I'll never actively seek another's company.  I tend to drink too much coffee, dye my hair too dark, lose myself in the alternate realities of tragic fiction, revert to grunge music and pit bull talk radio, and pen journalfuls of self-indulgent poetry.  I'm so 1994 I can hardly stand myself.

Now that I'm a mother and my attitude affects the emotional well-being of a wee someone whose temperament is not yet set in stone, I'm terrified of this slippery slope of rainy day self-indulgence that tends to set in with the Stone Temple Pilots.  I can't get down and waste my time plodding through these days of diminishing sunlight, because there are little eyes watching me.  If I smile, she smiles.  If I cry, she cries.  If I laugh too hard, she cries. (My boo-hoo and my belly laugh must sound similar to her.)  If I sit around all weekend working myself into a funk watching Winona Rider movies, she's not going to learn to look forward to this time of year -- a time when we should be roasting hot dogs and marshmallows at her grandparents' church hayride and carving kittycat faces into  pumpkins.  God forbid that she would ever have to act as her parent's emotional babysitter just because the season shifted.

So starting this year, I'm going to do whatever it takes to adjust myself to the change in the air, for her sake.  I may dye my hair platinum instead of mahogany.  Switch to decaf.  Learn how to cook a good Irish breakfast.  Thrill to scary movies that are actually scary (because , as Aunt Jess knows, I am a tremendous wuss).  Listen to Glenn Miller instead of Glen Beck.  Embark upon lengthy strolls behind A-Bird's stroller, scarf aflutter.  

I can be present enough in my own mind to make a change.  Because whether we realized it or not when we chose to become parents, my husband and I stepped beyond the obligation of only meeting our own needs and into the responsibility of looking after the needs of our daughter.

And that doesn't just cover the DHS checklist of food, clothing and shelter.  

Affection and emotional security are way up there, too.