More Fall

My kids love their uncles and aunts so much. When my brother was in town Daisy would wake up every day and ask first thing if we were going to see "Phiwip and Ow-ison." I love this picture of her being swung by Philip and Grandma.

I really love this picture too, of Ben and Ky looking like twins.

Fluffy grassy-things, and that great Fall color palette

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Big Cottonwood leaves

We went up the canyon one day so I could take some "school pictures" of everyone. I was afraid we'd missed the best of the leaves, but down lower they were still really lovely. It was one of those changeable Fall days---chilly at first, but then the sun came out and warmed us up, and the light was really beautiful. After an hour or so, the clouds descended and we saw some snow falling as we drove back down!

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Lightning

I just love the aspen trees in this picture, tumbling heedlessly over that cliff like gold lightning racing toward the ground.

This Fall has been the way Fall always is, warm October days packed so tightly between the brittle nights that they start to bulge and burst around the edges; everything dazzling and sudden and fleeting as we try to fit in one more thing before the weather turns. I'm taking pictures faster than I can edit them; convinced every time I go anywhere that this particular tree is the brightest red, this patch of mountain the sharpest yellow; trying to grab and pocket each individual flash of light from the sun as it sets sooner and sooner over the western hills.

I've written about it before, but when does that ever stop me from writing about it again? If finding time to reflect on things was hard ten years ago, it's only gotten harder with each passing season, as my heart has had to unfold itself around ever widening and branching paths with each child I've had. They're so surprising! And changeable! It's like that most-delightfully-named developmental stage, the Mulberry Stage, where a zygote divides until it fills itself nearly to bursting, and then suddenly blossoms into something completely new and differentiated and almost person-like---only I'm having to keep up with all six of them doing it over and over, while I watch helplessly and wish I had more minutes to sit still and ponder what it all means.

My eldest son, this brilliant boy, had another birthday and I wanted to grab him by both shoulders and make him freeze just like this, happy and talkative and insightful; maybe bottle his 11-year-old self and store it up so I can have it again, just a taste, after he's moved beyond bears and magic and Rubik's Cubes. I settled for telling him, sternly, that he better not have any big ideas about growing taller than me, to which he replied, (quite cheekily, I thought) that growing taller than me was the highest, holiest aim of his existence.

What did I ever do to deserve such a boy?

Well, anyway. My brother and his family were here and we got up into the mountains for an afternoon at Sundance, and it was gold and quiet and perfect before everything raced on again.

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