What can I say about the onset of autumn? What words are there to describe such beauty? How can I make you understand the glorious beauty and the way it makes me feel? Will it help if I confess that for eight weeks from the middle of August to the middle of October I rose each morning with happiness and purpose? That’s a record to be proud of. Will it help your understanding when I say I did not feel that sinking feeling in my chest, that hollow sucking down that makes one wonder about the health of her heart, during that entire eight weeks. In addition, I had no qualms, no anxiety regarding all the music activities and performances in which I was involved. Let me repeat; no debilitating, paralyzing anxiety for two months! If autumn be the fount of long life and happiness; linger on oh many colored leaves and sooth my heartstrings!

What a joyous season this has been! It takes me back, oh so many years, to a heartache fraught time in my early 20s. Yes, relational stress was mine in abundance. Nevertheless, fall came on and with it an ebullience so strong a neighbor remarked, “Wow Cherry, you really bloom in the fall, don’t you?” Affirmative. And now, just a few millimeter marks beyond my mid-sixties, I can say the same. It is truly the autumn of my life. It is the now or never season. Time to complete the bucket list and finish strong. May I bloom like never before. May I revel in the season and embrace the beauty of fall in perpetuity. May the glorious colors, the golds and reds and yellows and orange refresh you as well and may the health and glory of fall linger on and on in memory and add warmth and glow to your winter. And if you are in the autumn of your life? – May it be your best season ever!