Ritual

from Jacqueline

It’s mid-October and 82 degrees in the Bay Area.  There’s not a cloud in the sky and I know it’s probably pretty much the same throughout the state.  But I’m ready for a few clouds. I’m ready for rain, and to be snuggled up by the fire with a good book on long dark evenings.  

I’m ready for fall, and winter. Technically, it’s fall – there are leaves of gold, brown and red across my lawn, and the sun is low in the sky.  And I’m in the midst of changing the curtains and chair covers.  It’s something that almost everyone did when I was a kid.  The clocks changing in late October meant that it was time for the inside of the house to reflect what was expected outside the house.  Down came the summery cotton or linen curtains, all cabbage roses and bright colors, and up went the heavy velvet or wool drapes in burgundy or gold.  Light slip covers were lifted from the chairs and sofas, laundered and put away for the next year, to be replaced heavier fabrics you had to wrangle into place, ready for those evenings of sweatered-up lounging. I have to admit, the house I grew up in was likely to have more ice inside the windows than outside, so you were thankful for those heavy curtains keeping the drafts at bay.

My husband thinks this is a strange ritual, this changing of the curtains and slipcovers – it’s right up there with what he calls “British women’s throw pillow disease.”  Yep, I kind of like pillows – they go nicely with the lounging. But there’s a sense of excitement when I take down my white curtains and replace them with the gold velvets – the evenings have been getting nippy, and the windows in my 1942 bungalow are the breezy originals.  The white slipcovers are still on the sofa – after all, it was very hot yesterday, so it doesn’t seem quite right for the darker covers to go on, but it will be time, come All Hallow’s Eve. 

It’s just a funny old ritual of mine, a way to mark the passing of the season, a connection to the rhythm of life.  And as soon as those velvets come out, it’s as if I’m a child again – I can almost hear the wood-saw in the distance, and smell leaves being burned on days when a silk-scarf mist barely rises above frosty ground.  The cows cluster in the corners of fields for warmth, and it seems that even the sounds on the air are different, as if muffled against the cold.  

Everything is ready for sleep – until, that is, I break out those white cotton curtains, come Spring.

Have a wonderful weekend!