And so I have become ...

...more contemplative.

Since 2010, I tend to think just a little more deeper. Longer. I ... contemplate.

So, I thought I'd share some of those contemplations with you. From my Southern perspective, if you will.

The Fall of the Year

The author's mother, Betty Purvis, March 2010 Livestock Festival Parade. 

Autumn, we also call this season. For a long time, I thought spring was my favorite time of year. The cold has been pushed aside. The leaves and flowers begin to bud. In my hometown, we held a Livestock Festival, complete with beauty pageant. On the final day of the festival, meticulously decorated floats, choreographed school bands and cheerleaders, grown men in funny hats riding on tiny tricycles, classic convertibles carrying beauty queens of all ages strolled, rode, marched, or drove down our dogwood and azalea lined Main Street. Sylvanians lived for this week.

And so I thought, I too lived for spring.

But, no. I went to Idaho this past week and experienced--for the first time in a while--the fall of the year. That time when we sing, "The autumn leaves, drift past my window ... the autumn leaves of red and gold ..."

I sat at a kitchen table, my hands wrapped around a warm mug of hot coffee, and watched those gold and red leaves do exactly that. Fall like snow. Spiraling downward. Autumn's dance of praise.

Author Photo Taken in Idaho, 2012

I told my hostess: this is my favorite time of year. The chill in the air. The look of a new season as leaves turn vibrant and then fall to the ground. This was the time of year when, as a child, I played outside, creating stories which only I played out. Stories of traveling westward in the 1800s. Life was primitive. Challenging. And, when I'd come to the open landscape ripe for building a new town (AKA, my back yard), I raked the pine straw that had made a blanket over the browning grass, forming small houses, merchant stores, a church ...

During one such autumn, our neighbor watched me from her home across the street. At some point, she and Mother met at the side of our home. Martha Nell declared, "She doesn't belong in this world, does she?"

Mother laughed and said, "She's always got these stories forming in her head ..."

She left me alone to create and act them out.

My father, on the other hand, encouraged me to write ...