Sensitive

 What is it about changing the clocks by one hour, that can impact a person's whole emotional equilibrium?  For some reason, it happens to me every year.

It's not a terrible thing, it's more of a curiosity, just a bump in the road that I need to hurdle.  It feels like a lump in my throat, a pause in my step, a tear migrating from the corner of my eye.

I find myself experiencing a strong reaction to music, to memories, to the power of love, to the fears I live with each day.  I don't really know how long I'll have to wait this out...it may last a week, it may go on for months.  

Just a couple of days ago, my eldest brother suddenly lost an old school chum.  A day later, a young man who attended school with my older sons died, unexpectedly.  The sadness clenches my insides with viselike claws.

When the trees are just about bare, with skeletal branches reaching towards the sky; when mid afternoon starts to turn like an early dusk, and supper is eaten after dark; I find myself feeling confined.  Shorter, colder days create a claustrophobia in me.  

 When I was a kid, I remember walking home from school in the Autumn and Winter.  Dismissal time was 3:00 pm, and by the time I arrived home and tended to the usual after school stuff, the sun was already low on the horizon. I was probably a bit depressed, although I didn't have a word for it back then.  It just seemed that the darkness and frigid weather went on forever.  

This year has beaten us all up.  I hope we are somehow stronger for having learned to endure the challenges we have faced.  Last Christmas was pretty much the last of "normal" for us.  Less than two months into the new year, and we had to learn a whole new way of life.  I remember, at Christmas, 2019,  feeling relief that I was somehow able to enjoy the holiday, despite it having been my first one since I had lost my beloved Mama.  Now, here we are, on the outer fringes of the 2020 holiday season, and I don't know what to feel.  

I have cooked the family Thanksgiving meal every year for decades.  My parents were always here, as well as all my kids, their significant others, and my elderly aunts and uncles.  The older generation has mostly passed away, leaving my Dad and my mom's youngest sister.  All the others are gone, and it makes for a strange, empty yearning.  I somehow think this year will be downplayed, due to the pandemic.  I believe the same of Christmas, which saddens me.  I suspect Midnight Mass will not be a possibility this year.

 The wistfulness, melancholy, and blue feelings are countered by the elevated appreciation for my family, my life, for God. I find myself lingering to watch migrating birds and to take in the smells of Autumn.  Life is always a gift -- beautiful, messy, unpredictable.