Summer dies in a burst of flame, leaving autumn a burnt trail, a blaze of yellows and oranges and reds, scorched dark around the edges. I’ve always loved autumn for this, for its crackle and crunch, the faint whiff of smoke in the air. For the way that it teases your senses, tickles your memory, with its crisp melancholy, the earthy smell of decay, the faintest smell of distant snow in the air. I’ve always loved autumn.

Autumn’s passed, now, mostly. The colour is gone, the leaves no longer crunch beneath my feet. But the snow hasn’t come. Not yet. The streets are wet, the air is chill and damp, the trees are a dark tangle against the gray, gray sky.

Not autumn. Not winter. Somewhere, sometime, in between.

I’ve heard it said that life with a baby is a sort of perpetual springtime. A continual confrontation with newness, a ever-bursting forth of life and colour. Green leaves sparkling with dew; purple buds unfolding over fresh damp earth. And it has, for me, been this: my baby’s eyes always sparkle springtime, glimmer their reflection of the ever-new.

But my eyes, my eyes do not sparkle springtime. I press my fists into sockets and try to squeeze away the tiredness, block out the gray. I am tired, worn by the effort of… of what? Of doing what millions upon millions upon millions of others do every day, have done for centuries, millennia. Of being woman/wife/mother/household-manager/professional. Of being and doing, and doing and being, against the backdrop of a wet gray sky.

I’m tired, worn, burdened by the gray of this in-between time, this not-autumn, not-winter, so-far-from-spring season. This colourless unseason.

And then I look into my daughter’s eyes and I see bright wet buds unfurling. I see vitality, optimism, vigour, hope. I see a new season. I see springtime. In the deep, deep blue of her eyes, I see green.

And I am, in that moment, refreshed. Restored.

New.

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