4 Birth Months Who Were Made For Woodsmoke, Wool Sweaters, And Early Dark
Woodsmoke in the evening air. The weight of a wool sweater you have been waiting to wear. A light switched on while dinner is still cooking. For some people, these are among the year’s most welcome pleasures. January, May, October, and November may feel especially at home in this colder, quieter part of autumn.
January
January, you can be wonderfully absorbed in an evening alone. You look up from a book and discover that the window has become a reflection of the room. You had forgotten to watch the time. There is something satisfying about being this interested in your own company, following a thought for as long as it holds you, letting the silence continue without wondering what to put into it. With the curtains drawn and a whole evening still ahead, you settle a little deeper into the chair. There are several chapters left.
May
May, autumn gives comfort a delicious sense of contrast. A little cold makes warmth feel personal. You come home with chilly wrists and pull the sleeves of a wool sweater down over your hands. A bowl warms your palms before you have tasted anything in it. You linger over these small arrivals of pleasure. They are part of what you anticipate on the walk home, when the air is getting sharper and the windows along your street are beginning to glow.
October
October, your idea of a beautiful autumn evening usually has room for somebody else. You want a friend to smell the woodsmoke drifting down the street, to come inside with cold hands, to stay while you put something warm on the table. Half the pleasure is watching them become comfortable. They unbutton their coat. Their story gets longer. The evening you pictured begins acquiring all the unplanned details that make it theirs, too.
Eventually someone asks whether you mind if they stay a little longer, and you are already moving your things off the other end of the couch.
November
November, you can love autumn even when it makes you a little sad. The smell of a fire can bring back an evening you had almost forgotten, along with the person who was there and the particular way your life felt then. You can miss that time while enjoying the warmth around you now.
You notice autumn changing a little every day. A tree you walk past every day changes, and you notice. You remember how it looked a week ago. Even as its branches grow bare, it keeps your attention. Your affection has room for the whole season: the first brilliant leaves, the rain that brings them down, the last few still holding on.