Inklings: “Tis the season to be not ready

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By Janice Lindsay, Contributing Writer

Inklings: “Tis the season to be not ready Slow down! I am not ready!

By the time you read this, Thanksgiving will be over. The official liturgical start of the Christmas season, the first Sunday in Advent, Nov. 27, will be nigh.

I am not even ready for Thanksgiving, never mind Christmas. And I don's mean readiness in the usual sense of having finished my Christmas shopping, which I haven's even started, though if the stores had anything to do with it, I would have been buying Christmas presents to celebrate Labor Day.

It's a psychological unreadiness that's holding me back.

I's not ready because my mind still clings to lingering remnants of summer. This year, summer took a long time to arrive and I'se held it fiercely to my heart. Mother Nature apparently felt the same. She sent fingers of summery warmth well into October so that even the occasional spring peeper and lily were fooled. Then Mother Nature, realizing her error, did an abrupt about-face and over-compensated, sending the season's first snow for Halloween, though it shouldn's arrive until Christmas.

We hauled out our flannels and our fleeces. But yesterday, the warm day held that humid spring smell. I could almost imagine it was spring, except that I was wearing my hunter-orange jacket and sweeping just-fallen leaves off the deck. Soon, cold will return.

My brain doesn's know what time of year it is. This is the cause of my mental unreadiness.

We humans, at least those of us who live in climates with four distinct seasons, learn to adjust our moods and expectations to the prevailing mood of the seasons. Each season has its own texture – its own air-feel, smells, foods, activities. We enjoy each one in its proper time. But we need the seasons to change gradually, one melting gracefully into the next, giving us a chance to adjust. Not that I would ever complain about some extra days of warmth, but this fall we'se been bounced around as if the seasons were playing Ping-Pong with our minds.

Even as I write this, a small summery moth-like insect flutters at the screen outside my window. I am not Mother Nature's only confused creature.

I don's know how to “un-confuse” a moth.

But I must figure out how to un-confuse myself, as Mother Nature doesn's seem to be accepting her responsibility to do so. I would like to launch, full-hearted, into holiday preparations, rather than saying, “What? Already?”

I suppose I could start my Christmas shopping. But I am not by nature an enthusiastic shopper. I have to be In The Mood and I's not, which is precisely the problem.

I might try playing Christmas music. But no. In normal autumns, I have to hold myself back, not allowing Christmas music until the liturgical calendar says it's time, lest the mood grow stale before the holiday arrives. As I write, it seems too warm, too early. I's still on “In the Good Old Summertime,” not ready for the abrupt transition to “Jingle Bells.”

I know! Cranberry bread! Fresh cranberries offer the perfect seasonal transition. They grow in the summer, come to us in the fall, then sometime in early winter, they'se gone. They grow only in northern climates. So they'se not like other fruits, grown in southern California or Guatemala or someplace and available year-round to confuse our sense of season. Fresh cranberries are direct and uncompromising about what season they belong to. The smell of cranberries cooking says, “Summer's over. It's fall. Winter's coming. Get used to it.”

Thank you, little berries. I needed that.

Contact Janice Lindsay at [email protected].

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