A writers’ group assignment was on the theme of one’s most favorite time of year and why that is. I pondered the four very different annual seasons and wrote out a few pros and cons of each.
Wandering around the back yard in summer gives me an all’s-well feeling… like picking flowers does… but it can get pretty hot. Wandering in a similar way while raking up leaves gives me a lift and, with energy to spare, I crash through the crunchy piles and end up making more work for myself! Winter wonderlands draw me outside to breathe deeply and play in the snow when I’m on a break from shoveling it. Rosy cheeks are becoming on me but, as a frozen mass, I get back inside to hibernate. Springtime brings fragrant showers after which I stomp childishly, in my red rubber boots, through puddles… only to become dreary of such a soggy day.
Nothing I wrote down helped me identify a favorite season, for each had its own good and not-so-good elements. One evening, when it seemed that, in my mind, all of them mingled together, I put my notebook away and procrastinated in doing the writing assignment. I was aware, for example, that although it wasn’t summertime, it was overly warm inside like summer; and, although it wasn’t autumn, the orange, yellow and maple-red decor tasted—if my eyes had taste buds—like autumn’s array of fallen leaves and late chrysanthemums… but it wasn’t autumn. Thank goodness for that because it would mean winter was just ahead. Ho hum. And, speaking of winter, while looking outside at conspicuous clouds ominously foretelling a storm, I felt chilly yet it wasn’t really winter.
Getting up from the rocker near the window I strolled into the bedroom, with its perpetual spring palette of colours. Inspired to write of patchy grass turning green, new buds and baby birds, while in my spring mood, I pondered, Is this my favorite season? It was nice to jot down how, because I love all the seasons equally, I had purposely decorated my home in themes of the four seasons. Still, I was completely baffled to choose one room over the other as a ‘favorite’.
Almost as an epiphany, a different train of thought aroused my inspiration to turn from the windows and the four walls and reflect, instead, on the seasons of one’s life: infancy, childhood, youth, adulthood, middle age, the ‘golden-jubilee’ years and ripe old age. I found that, for clarification, I had to look no farther than in a book of directions which I often seek when I’m stumped. It told me there are specific reasons for ‘seasons’ in life itself; for with all its seasons, as underscored in the bible, there is great worth. On the first page of my assignment, I quoted a small line from that book. ‘To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.’
Oh my, what a revelation. It left me with the freedom to not pronounce one season to be better than another. In conclusion, what made perfect sense for me was to write out the assignment giving credit not only to all four annual seasons but to honour life’s seasons; for, the truth was, and still is, in every season and every time, there is, decidedly, some purpose and reasoning to every thing!