Once upon a time, I got married in October – picked it because of the weather, the trees, the air – even if it rained, I would not care, the coziness of the season not to be denied.
I also got the text from my husband in October, actually, very end of September when October is playing peekaboo. He texted, the generous soul, after weeks of no contact, months of no visits, a couple years of him living in Florida – “for a job” – that I would be being served with divorce papers. In the text, he informed me he already told the kids, and “they understand.”
Understood what exactly I would have asked, if I wasn’t talking to a blue bubble, the humiliation of our adult kids knowing he was divorcing me before I did. They’re adults, they understand, but I, too was an adult, and did not understand. Not one bit.
Did he call them one by one? Or was it a group call or family text I was no longer a part of? Was this shared like a corporate takeover – a merger or acquisition, when employees have no clue, until called into a surprise meeting and wander into conference room or zoom call, coffee in hand, to find HR sitting there, and know immediately life as you know it is about to be irrevocably over.
Their life isn’t over, but mine was, yet no one seemed to notice.
So it’s pretty remarkable that my very favorite month still holds enough juice to overpower such a horrible memory of the dissolution of more than half my life.
It was in October that the papers were served, the sheriff banging on my door like the place was on fire, me hiding in the windowless hall, squatting on the floor like I was hiding from Jehovah’s Witnesses. Or ICE.
But still, the freshness of the air, the crisp October air, the changing leaves, the squirrels hiding acorns in my potted plants, the spectacular sunsets and miraculous full moons, somehow fill me with joy – because life does go on, if you want it to.
Doesn’t matter what the text says, how hard the sheriff deputy knocks, whether you have to google plaintiff and defendant and dissolution and what that even means. October still paints the hills with the precision of a surgeon and the randomness of a street performer you happen by in the subway, mesmerized by the beauty of the echoes all around.
October is so brief, perhaps on purpose, before rain, wind, or a freak autumn blizzard erases what was there, even for just a moment.
The air cools, the sun sets, leaves change, no longer needed by the trees that hold them, and they fall to the ground to rot – and by doing so, feed the chipmunks and bugs and nurture the soil just under the surface.
We can’t stop it. No one can.
And it won’t be long before trees are stripped naked to the elements of winter: the cold, ice, snow, and dark. But before then, October shares such crisp, albeit temporary beauty right before the darkness of winter, to remind us to enjoy the show, then rest, because spring is coming, eventually, and we begin again.
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