My nine year old and I put out the fall decorations on a random Tuesday night while her big sisters did homework and her little brother went to Scouts.
There’s nothing fancy about these decorations. Some wooden pumpkins and some hand-painted signs from back in the days when I desperately wanted those lettered signs everyone had … but we could barely afford groceries so I had to make my own.
And we still put that wooden block out every year as a reminder to be so very grateful. Funny how I need that even now when we can definitely afford groceries and hand-lettered signs if I want.
We also strung a set of paper leaves, made back in our homeschool days on another random Tuesday while I led a language arts class and my friend crafted with the little ones. Of all the foliage we hang, it’s my favorite. A reminder that though that season was hard, it was sweet. Good things happened. Beauty was made.
When the baby boy came home that evening he sank to the couch in indignation. “You decorated without me?”
My children. They place so much emphasis on the small, ordinary minutiae of life. The tiny moments I find burdensome at times–really, you want to decorate when the laundry needs folding and the dishes need washing and the homework needs checking and the lunches need packing and the mama needs a glass of wine?
But what is life if not the minutiae? The tiny everyday ordinary. The ushering in of seasons with little rituals that have become so routine to me–but so significant to my children?
So go ahead and pull out the old things you think are tired and worn and no longer significant. Usher in this new season with reminders that it has come before, it will come again, and it’s not the things that matter. It’s the significance of the doing they remember.
Lindsey P. Brackett 