Thirty days ago, I wrote that the calendar said September, but the puddle appeared to have missed the announcement.
Summer was still everywhere. The trees were green. The days were warm. Most things looked exactly as they had the day before. And yet something was already changing. Now here we are. The last day of September.
I could probably compare photographs from the beginning of the month with today and find plenty of evidence, the light, the trees, the water, the wildlife, the length of the days. Small changes that accumulated while I was busy living inside them.
That’s the strange thing about transition. We often recognize it most clearly when we’re standing on the other side looking back. At the beginning, we ask: What’s going to change? At the end, we realize: I did.
September was supposed to be about the quiet grace of transition. I thought I would spend the month watching summer become autumn. And I did. But as usual, the puddle had other plans.
Because once I started thinking about transition, I began seeing it everywhere. In places. In relationships. In families. In our bodies. In the roles we hold. In what we need. In what we can do. In what we no longer want. In what matters more than it used to. In the people we are becoming. Life contains very few completely still places.
Even when everything looks the same, something is moving. Children are growing. People are aging. Relationships are deepening or changing. Our understanding is shifting. Our bodies are adapting. The people we love are becoming different versions of themselves. So are we.
Maybe that is why transitions can feel unsettling. We want to know where we are. Before or after. Here or there. Summer or autumn. Holding on or letting go. But September has reminded me that much of life happens in the and.
Grateful for what was and curious about what comes next. Missing someone and continuing to live. Holding something close and allowing it to change. Afraid and moving forward. Sad and laughing. Uncertain and hopeful. Not who we were and not yet who we are becoming.
We don’t have to choose one truth before we are allowed to live the other. Maybe that’s the grace inside transition. There is room for both.
I don’t have to say goodbye to summer as though autumn erased it. Everything I noticed this summer came with me. The stories. The memories. The names. The relationships. The lessons. The ridiculous amount of birdseed. The evenings beside Brian. The girls exploring. The dogs nearby. The wildlife that taught me to keep looking. The version of myself who first sat down in this chair. None of that disappeared because the season changed. It became part of the person entering the next one.
Maybe our lives work that way too. The chapters don’t vanish when we turn the page. They become the story that brought us here. People we have loved remain part of us. Places we’ve left shape how we understand home. Things we’ve survived change how we meet difficulty. Joy changes what we recognize as enough. Loss changes what we understand about love.
Every season leaves something in us. And then we carry it forward. Tomorrow will be October. There will be another page on the calendar. Another season settling in. Another month of things I cannot predict. I don’t know exactly what the puddle will look like. I don’t know who will visit. I don’t know what stories will happen. I don’t know what will change in my own life.
But perhaps I don’t need to stand at the edge of every transition asking only what I am losing. Maybe I can also ask: What is this making room for? Not because everything that leaves needed to leave. Not because what comes next will necessarily be better. And certainly not because every ending needs a silver lining. Simply because my life is still becoming.
September didn’t ask me to leave summer behind. It invited me to carry summer differently. And perhaps that’s what transition has been trying to teach me all month. We don’t move forward empty-handed. We bring every season we’ve already lived. And then, one ordinary day at a time, we make room for another.
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