It's my very favorite month of the whole year, one notch above December, strange as that seems, October falling third.
Part of the reason I love it so much is that it suits the part of me that is a tiny bit melancholic in November, and lest you think that melancholy is a bad thing, not to me it isn't.
Don't feel sorry for me. It takes this month touched with melancholy to prepare me for everything that December promises, when December is all that I hope it will be.
How could I experience the joys of December without feeling a little bit sober-minded in November? Could my mind bear the beauty of Christmas without first seeing the beauty of autumn fall from the trees and carpet the ground, leaving myriad shades of brown in the landscape?
Perhaps November is a little like Lent before Easter to me, broken by Thanksgiving Day.
I must admit I had never thought about telling anyone about this November melancholy of mine. Maybe I'm doing it now because I had so little sleep last night after our phones shrilly insisted we Take Shelter.
All was well here and today is a glorious sunny chilly November day and I'm walking around my cozy house feeling deliciously melancholic.
Loss of sleep may not be all that contributes to this touch of sadness today, a sadness I'm comfortable with. I'm also missing this family, our youngest son and his family who visited us this past weekend.
But Christmas is a'coming and so will they be, and our daughter from Florida, God willing, days when RH and I hope to see all four of our children and their families together at one glorious time.
Maybe we'll even get a family picture to mark the occasion.
But before that I will not wallow but exalt in this season of somberness. I will celebrate each day until then in my own slightly melancholic November way.
Some melancholy in my nature had always attuned me to fall. The yellow of the birches and beeches, the blaze of maples, the somber red and brown of the few oaks, the brilliance of the sassafras along the road--these moved me like poetry. And when the leaves fell, thick and brown, with sometimes a bit of color still touching the grass, when the bonfires were built at the edge of the road and watched so carefully, when the flowerbeds were layered with leaves that became soggy in the autumn rain, when the last leaves were gone and the trees stood wet against a gray sky--then I felt curiously at home, one with nature and all her sadness.
Nelia Gardner White
from The Pink House
