Autumn…news from

I survived a three day period this October which marks the anniversaries of the death of two friends and of my first husband. Leaves fall. I move the herbs into the study and it warms up again. My grand-daughter is moving along in ways that can be described as very very close to crawling and pulls herself up to standing, mostly by using the nearest grown-up. Hickox Street has been widened as it turns into St. Francis, maybe in response to a terrible fatal accident last spring. I ate a glazed doughnut, and felt no regrets.
Then the car lights came on in the middle of the night. That really scared me!
Backstory–a recall, an adjustment to the brake lights, failure of that adjustment. Drained battery, engine light icons…trying to put it all together. Until at 2 am the driveway lit up red. I ran out and tried different things. Fortunately, but who knows why, the lights went off and I limped it to the dealer next day.
Now it is “fixed.” How many times have I tried to do the right thing, only to have it lead to something problematic and unexpected. Outside the laundromat a woman was crying in her green car. I told myself that if she was still crying when I came out I’d check on her. She wasn’t crying by then.
We realized the baby–like many of her relatives–has a bad case of FOMO–fear of missing out. She’ll fight sleep to stay where the action is. I personally don’t really have that any more. Autumn comes to me no matter what I do.