Precious Imperfect Transitory Beautiful Things

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to  let it go,
to let it go.

From "In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems Vol. 1, Beacon Press).

I am a lover of the seasons; in particular, a lover of the fall. We chase the colors for weeks on end. We spend days away, roaming around, seeing what there is to see. We chase the colors through October; we slide into November, exhausted, like a ball player heading for home after a long run around all the bases.

I live in a place where the regular rhythm of the seasons guides our days, our weeks, our years. I love each season best in its turn. The first green shoots of spring. The first butterflies of summer. The first riotous reds and oranges and yellows of autumn. The first gentle snow fall, covering everything, making my world quiet and soft and clean: winter white.

But it is hard to let them go: these precious imperfect transitory beautiful things. I collect them. I hold them to me. I take pictures. I try to make them stay.

The leaf in this picture is huge; it's hard to show the scale, but I can fit both of my hands on it, fingers spread wide open, with room left over. When we came back from the woods on Tuesday, my husband and I waded in Bald Eagle Creek and stream-walked in our water shoes. It was an unusually warm day, one stolen from sweet summer. I found the leaf, marveled over its size, brought it home.

The purple flowers are a variety of osteospermum that I grow in pots each year; I carried them on my wedding day. I was grateful for them: a handful of color against my white two-piece dress. The purple flowers appear in each of the four photos taken of us on that day with my camera by the judge, the only attendee at our wedding.

The Dancing Girls, you've met before. Such adventures we have together! In this photo, they are doing some sort of fancy Busby Berkeley thing, with patterns and movements and such. But it grows cold out. Every night now, I worry about them. Their plant on the front porch will freeze soon. Each night, I bring them in. One of these days it will be time not to. It is a heartbreaking decision: when to let them go.

And the sand dollar . . . well, all I can say is that the Dancing Girls wanted it, and so there it is. I collect shells at every beach I visit. I wonder if this one might be from that perfect, white, sandy beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida that is one of my favorites. We used to go there every winter, but we haven't been back in so many years that I've lost count.

But I remember one perfect day collecting them: morning sun in my eyes, my husband (then-boyfriend) at my side, the ocean waves at our feet, the full day at our disposal, nowhere we had to be, and sand dollars everywhere for the taking. I remember collecting them, them spilling out of my hands. I took off my shoes and loaded them up with sand dollars; carried them like treasures; brought them home; put them in pretty bottles where I could see them. So I would remember that no matter what else happens, there are days like those, too.

There are places you will go now, that you will never go again. But on the last time you are there, you may not know it. You will not say: Aha, this is the last time! No: Later, you will look back and say . . . I miss that place; I wonder why we haven't been back again.

I am better at holding on than letting go. I take pictures; I put them here to keep them safe. I love and treasure these things. It is a life lesson I am working on: to keep the love and the precious memories . . . but for the things themselves, to get better at letting them go.

The song: Dan Fogelberg, Make Love Stay.