Seasonal Shift

Nighttime temperatures are dropping into the 30s, now that it's fall. It's time to think about making the seasonal change on the front step: bring the pots of annuals indoors and let mums be the welcoming color for the next 6 weeks or so.

It's hard to know exactly when to make this seasonal shift. No frosts are predicted for the coming week.

I watch as friends struggle with aging parents, trying to shift them into assisted living or perhaps a nursing home. Often the 80-somethings don't want to make the change. Even if they are willing, the transition can feel difficult because so many things have to be let go of. One 80-year-old friend broke into tears at the sight of the washing machine in her new condo near her daughter, a thousand miles away from "home." Her old washing machine, her usual washing machine, was gone. Gone.

We too might feel like shedding a tear. Summer is over. We enter the fall of our lives.