fall

Fall is bittersweet for me. I love the cooler weather, the oranges and reds of the changing maples, but I hate what fall portends—those long, cold months trapped inside. Fall also makes me feel melancholy, heavy with the sense of time passing. I’ve been feeling this a lot in the last weeks, probably because I can’t deny time’s passing this year—Stella is starting kindergarten. We were up north at the cabin again last weekend, and when we arrived home on Monday afternoon, I looked at the calendar and realized she would be starting school in just over two weeks! I felt almost panicky—there were the school supplies and new school clothes to buy, the forms to fill out, etc. It all seemed like too much. It didn’t help, of course, that D was out of town.

D has been gone a week, and I’ve had it with single parenthood. The saving grace has been the two full days of childcare. On Tuesday morning after I dropped off the girls, I tied up the last piece of a seemingly endless freelance article, then dove into my manuscript for an hour. I met a friend for lunch, then spent the next couple of hours working on an editing project. Today, I plan to work on the book, go for a run!, and then back to editing in the afternoon. Heavenly.

In a week, however, these long days will be over. Stella will be in half-day kindergarten (it’s a lottery system here in Minneapolis), which is about, oh, two minutes long. So for the next year, I will write in the morning, come home to be with Stella (and Zoë on the days she’s not at toddler school). Then when Stella gets on the bus, I’ll have another few hours to work. Stella will be home early afternoon, and we’ll have a little time to do errands or crafty projects before we go get Zoë. I won’t have big chunks of work time, but I will still have more time total than I’ve had in the last year and a half. I’m gearing up to roll with it.

Yesterday morning Stella and Zoë and I went to Target and checked off the items on the kindergarten supply list, and this weekend, we’ll go shopping for Stella’s new school outfits (a ritual I remember fondly from my own childhood and teen years). Then in two weeks, I will have a kindergartner! How is it possible that my 3-pounder has become so big and tall that it is difficult for me to carry her? How is possible that that tiny baby, her fingers unable to close around my pinky, has grown into a beautiful, responsible girl, all sass and spunk? I suppose I will continue to ask these questions indefinitely, with every new milestone.

Do you ever stop marveling at this, how fast they grow?