seasons
I was looking at my Reboli calendar at the new month of September, capturing a bounty of the late summer harvest, and I got to thinking…
It’s a few days into September and up in New York, it’s time to harvest beautiful, ripe tomatoes. Here are some photo’s of the most delicious, sweetest tomatoes from my father-in-laws’ harvest last summer.
It’s hard to beat a delicious, vine-ripe tomato. I love to sprinkle a little salt and pepper and just enjoy the depth and taste of the fruit.
My mind quickly wandered, as it often does, back to seasons. Here in the South, we’re months past tomato season. I suppose there is still a trickle of late bloomers, but for the most part, the season is over.
It made me think of seasons. Although they are marked by a particular date and time on the calendar, what happens in the particular season, really is quite different.
In the past, I think there were more defined seasons of life. At least the stereotypical ones like childhood, young adult, college, marriage, kids, work, and retirement. Now there is so much variation in life, one can no longer predict what will happen next. Most of us, who now have adult children, have a family structure that looks very different from the previous generation. In some ways, it seems like the order of the season has subtlely morphed.
I wonder if the sequence is off, does it change the outcome? Probably not that much, but it still caused me to ponder.
For instance, young adults are not getting married or if they are, they’re getting married later in life. Having children is delayed, so they get puppies instead likely filling the void of wanting to nurture (my mother-in-law's theory ;). Many think this new way of life, out of sequence from the former, offers so many opportunities. Opportunities for new experiences, travel, living in different places, and experience a variety of cultures. It sounds so progressive, and it is, but does it come with a cost, and why the delay? We certainly didn’t have all our ducks in a row years ago. We didn’t have a savings account to carry us over if tragedy struck. We had jobs and we worked and we figured it out as we went along. In some ways, maybe we weren’t so predictable after all but more adventurous than I give us credit for?
As a society, climate change is a huge issue and concern. The theory of interfering with planet earth will consequently alter the natural order of the world as we know it. Could the same theory apply to the traditional, historic seasons of life? Some would agree and others would vehemently disagree and state that I am old fashioned and therefore narrow-minded. But, I look at young adults, and I see that most of them want what we wanted, it’s just that the order is very different. I’m not saying it is right or wrong thing, it just is.
Maybe the order doesn’t matter, maybe it does, it seems to matter in science. This certainly isn’t a deeply philosophical, or political debate, for that matter but rather an observation I came to while gazing at a picture and thinking of a resent conversation with one of my children and thinking how different seasons of life can be.
I tend to like order. I find it much more predictable. It may not appear to be as fun and exciting as life-lived-randomly, but it suits my comfort level. Following an order certainly doesn’t mean everything falls naturally into place, but there is something freeing about staying in the lane, so to speak. Following a map provides guidelines that do not deter or eliminate anything wonderful at all! I also understand that if one’s life has a different order, it doesn’t mean that it is purely without thought or intent. There can be deliberate intent behind the chosen path.
I recognize that not everyone needs to follow the same sequence of events, just like the tomato season in North Carolina is in June and July, and in New York, it is August and September. The season shifts a little sooner or later, but a shift occurs. However, I do think that we are rooted in certain tendencies, and when uprooted, maybe one becomes a little off-kilter?
