Autumn

The power of motherhood in the seasons

Slowly, as I’ve settled into motherhood, it’s dawned on me what wonderful power we hold, the heavy but happy weight of holding our baby’s childhood. I have always, always known how precious of a gift my own was, a daily gift from my mother, at home with us every day, and my father, working to provide for us. But it isn’t something I really understood the power of until this little baby girl was here, in that hospital bed crying, and we were the only ones there to care for her.

While I was pregnant with her last winter, I became consumed with the stress of Christmas stockings…do I get her one now? Do I buy extras for her siblings? Do I wait until I have all my babies? I had to get it right. It was one of those silly things my pregnancy emotions had me fixated on. I ended up buying and embroidering three, and crossing my fingers they would be available again. (Which they are, and I’m buy two more this year, and will have them embroidered when the time comes.)

It’s those tiny details I’ve realized hold so much memory for her life one day, the Christmas stocking her mother hung for her every year. And what’s so precious is how many little things I get to shape her life with…birthday traditions, favorite books, Saturday morning breakfast, decorating for Christmas with her little ornaments, playing outside, hearts everywhere on Valentine’s Day. Every tiny little miniscule detail is so, so very valuable. And that is the wonderful, wonderful power of motherhood.

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A few months before Price and I were married, we bought a two-story saltbox with navy blue ceilings and cabinets and trim, dirty gray tile flooring, bright white walls. We spent maybe ten minutes walking around that house, touring it in the middle of a snowstorm, both home from work. When we left, we made a circle through the neighborhood, and by the time we reached the house again, we’d already hung up with our loan officer and our realtor. It was about to be ours.

I’m really not sure why we even wanted that house. It was dirty and too expensive and the backyard was odd. But I was so overcome with the thought of that home being the one we brought babies home to. Something about it felt so comforting, and I saw the sweet potential of its tiny kitchen, the rooms at the top of the stairs, the quaintness of the street it sat on.

The last two months of our engagement were spent eating dinner on the floor of that house in our work clothes, a bandana in my hair, using paint cans as tables. We put hardwood floors in the kitchen and replaces all the shag carpet, painted every single remnant of blue out of that house, listening to crime podcasts and my yacht rock playlists until midnight or so before heading back to our apartment complex, where we were neighbors.

And by fall, the house felt like our home, the cabinets filled with wedding gifts and pictures of our families. It felt so tender to exist in a home together. I bought us matching pumpkin sweaters for Halloween, which we wore while I made Ree Drummond’s taco shell soup and Price opened our front door for what felt like hundreds of babies, knocking for candy, little bumblebees and power rangers and princesses and ninjas.

I remember being so happy to stop at Trader Joe’s after work in search of more tiny pumpkins to line my mantle with, tiny mums for the back patio, little chocolate leaves and cider candles. As I wandered the busy rows in my scuffed work heels and Ann Taylor blazer, I felt like we were really starting our lives that fall. This tiny little family, me and Price. Around that time, too, I found an Amish farm in Ohio online, little golden retrievers and cavalier puppies. I didn’t even wait for Price to think about it before I had our name on the list, and that was the start of our Annie joining us.

An overwhelming tenant to my falls for nearly half my life has been football games every weekend. Beginning with my presence on Friday night games in the marching band, a bass drum strapped to my chest and a black velvet cowboy hat, the strap tightened on my chin. Then my little brother discovered he could kick a football through the uprights rather well, and up until a heartbreaking loss one Saturday afternoon last November, we’ve been watching him every weekend since. That first fall in our married house, Price and I would drive down to my alma mater to watch Gabe on Saturday afternoons. For the away games, we would watch on our television, cheering from afar.

(I have to add…while my brother’s career as a college kicker ended, I just have to mention here that my career as a football fan in the stands has come to an end, too. This year, I’m looking forward to weekends stretched out in front of me without the early morning tailgate looming, the dread of a scorching hot metal bleacher in the middle of the day. I am so looking forward to watching the NFL in our library.)

When we sold our first home that winter, I cried in bed the morning the listing was posted. We had only lived for two whole seasons in that sweet place, summer and a beautiful fall that lasted through Christmas, but I ached at the thought of leaving it behind.

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We started renovations on our little cottage home the first week of September the next fall. Price and I spent the summer pouring through home and garden magazines, shared Pinterest boards, hours spent walking through this dusty, vacant house, making a plan. I felt the importance of this home especially…I knew in my heart that this was the one, the one my baby would one day live in, the one that would start and mold her childhood. By the next fall, I was pregnant with our precious Kit. We went to a nursery out in the middle of the country at the end of September after a breakfast of my favorite pancakes from Cracker Barrel. We spent nearly $200 or so on pumpkins and mums, and I don’t regret a single dollar. As I shifted them around on our porch, out of breath and sweating from the lingering summertime heat, I was thinking of my baby, how special these little things I’m doing to celebrate little holidays, weather changing will be to her one day.

It’s the precious power of my very own childhood, still stirring in me.

So as autumn peeks its tiny head around the corner, I’m quickly grasping at all the tender, quiet, comforting, wonderful memories and feelings I’ve ever had of this season.

Starting inside our home, I’ll wait until September 1^st to hang my felt pumpkin garlands, nestle my straw pumpkins on the mantle, and burn my favorite seasonal candles (Fall Farmhouse from Walmart and Aromatique’s Fireside Pumpkin). And I’ll even more patiently wait for nearly October before I fill my porch with mums and gourds and tiny pumpkins and big ones I can’t pick up myself. I think in the meantime, I’m going to try my hand at a wreath of dried hydrangeas, gathering them before they just completely wither away, gone to waste. I’ll pull out some more autumn colored quilts and little blankets we bought for Annie’s bed. And then, of course, Kit has collected an assortment of little autumnal outfits…browns and denims and dark blues to match her eyes.

This weekend, I’m ordering her Halloween costume, which she will wear to walk to my brother and his wife’s house and back to ours. Annie will be getting a matching one, too, of course. Two little pumpkins…and Price and me in our pumpkin sweaters.

This weekend, I have on the menu my first batch of homemade buttermilk cornbread and then on Sunday, with rain and the PGA Tour Championship in the forecast, chicken and dumplings, both feeling like a desperate declaration that the cooler air should stay.

As Kit gets older, I dream of pumpkin carving on the wide front steps of our porch, letting her tiny hands roll molasses cookie dough in a pie plate of sugar to take to Thanksgiving lunch, pick out a costume to go trick-or-treating in, one of those sweet monogrammed pails for her candy. And Price and I still in those scratchy, sweet pumpkin sweaters I bought that very first fall, in the magic of our first home, newly married.

Last week, I felt it was so near…the end of summertime. The girls and I sat on the porch before Price came home from work, the sun brightening the back of the house as it began to set, and the air blew nearly cool. It smelled of dry leaves and burned pine straw, of rain clouds and someone grilling in their backyard. August always feels that same way to me…so very close to relief.

Not quite, though. This week the wet heat has been back, straightening my heavy hair and drying my hydrangea bushes. But the hope has already been given…that one week was all I needed. Autumn is coming.

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Gathered some pretty fall things you can shop here, just for fun!