YET!

At 5:37 Tuesday morning the outdoor thermometer registered 81 degrees on October 3. I planned on this blog being Not Yet! as I wrote about October, one of my favorite months. Fifth grade girls like to write out the name, put a stem in the top of the capital O, and if I didn’t rush them about heading their paper, they could either draw a pumpkin face or color the that first letter an iconic orange. The post office worker had told my middle son that the weather would change on the 15. I just took her word as the seer of the month 12 more days down the calendar.

A cup of coffee and half a banana later, I went out to pull the black garbage can to the curb for noon pickup. I had to move through water in the air enough to have a damp bathrobe: It was a baby rain…that four letter word for moisture from the sky. YET had arrived. Twelve hours later the temperature is 75 and my front yard has muddy spots. Fall is on the way: rain, temperature, and leaves.

I’m a June baby, yet October at heart. From the first it was colors: oranges, yellows, deep reds. They brighten a landscape and create vistas worthy of a bucket list trip. Even when leaves turn brown and fall, a sonorous element is added to the landscape that is missing in green meadows. A change from the summer heat can come in dramatically. I stand on my porch in short sleeves watching a darkening northern sky with clouds rolling toward me. The first blue norther of the year raises goose bumps as I step inside and close the door. Hope of a change is in the offering. I share celebration time in October. I like the individuality of various plump pumpkins and shocks of corn to remind me of harvests. Children sprinkle laughter as they move from house to house in costumes from those that required monetary outlay to the ones from a bedsheet. Our family welcomed a baby girl to our family on an October morning and two weddings added other members some years later.

Houston can count on summer. A few perfect days make spring and a snow or freeze in a lifetime define winter, YET October offers us the opportunity to remember the promise to Noah.

As long as then earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and hear, summer and winter, day and night will not cease

Genesis 8:22