Autumn

Nostalgia time. For the colors, aromas, tastes and happiness of autumns past.

For school time autumns in Poland: the anticipation of a new school year, new subjects, new textbooks, eagerly read from cover to cover before the first day of school. A new school uniform: pleated navy skirt and a navy sailor blouse with white pipings. (My neighbor - a seamstress - made it for me every year - in a communist country school uniforms, no matter that compulsory - were impossible to buy). Walking home from school through the park with old friends and new classmates, picking chestnuts and creating chestnuts animals from them.

For happy family times autumns in Sweden, with spouse and a child. For weekends in our cottage in the woods on the shores of Lake Maelar. Picking lingonberries and mushrooms. Cleaning them on the sunny veranda - or - if it rained - inside, by the fireplace, and then cooking them on an outside stove. Ooh, the colors, the aromas! Being a happy wife, a happy mother.

Now the spouse is long gone - brain tumor took him young, the child is a grown up with her own life. And I am just my own usually quite happy - though now much older - self always in search of a new adventure.