As the temperature chills and the autumn leaves begin turning colors of melancholy, so does my heart turn inwardly to prepare for the winter of introspection. I am ready for the warm fires by the hearth. Aromas of the hot apple cider that Mother used to make surface in my memory. How I long to sit by the fireside and listen to Mother's stories as we sip the hot cider from Grandmother's press.
It was a good apple harvest this year. The cider press is an antique from my great-Grandfather's youth. I love it so. Melancholy impresses upon me ever deeper as I long to return to those days of my youth. The family was much closer in those days.
Mother encouraged us to write poetry and practice our needlework and baking skills in those days. Mother was a wonderful poet, though she never boasted.
If a heart could burst with longing, mine is surely ready as I think of the dear ones that have traveled on from this earth life. I miss them so. Some days I wonder how I am able to continue living without my parents and grandparents. Life with them was so filled with the art of living.
These days seem to be filled with remembering. Perhaps that is the great lesson and hence, the irony of life. Years advance much too rapidly in my opinion. Youth is fleeting when all those days with a bustling growing family enriches the moments beyond overflowing. Too fast flown away they come and fly more quickly than the sparrows who seek a far off refuge in winter, not seen again until springtime. In this case, the spring time comes when I leave this earth to join my loved ones in that far off place.
The apple cider is still delicious but the fire needs another log. Mother's rocking chair across the room seems to be keeping cadence with my heartbeat. I just know it is she who makes it move slowly rocking as I gaze longingly across the room where she spent many hours crocheting a new baby sweater or an afghan.
Yes indeed, Dear Diary, Mother knows when I am thinking of her even now for she comes to spend this time with me. Her Diary was filled with memories of my childhood. I joyously and tearfully leafed through the pages when she passed on. For weeks, I sat in her favorite rocking chair, the one where she sits now visiting in that invisible spirit body that used to dwell in her lovely physical frame.
I miss you mother. Dear Diary, let the secret stay with you until some day, my daughter unlocks these pages and reminisces somberly as I once did. May she smile when she gets to the part that tells how I rejoiced at her birth where I wrote in my diary how it felt to hold her tiny body close to my heart. I laughed and I cried all at once. I love you dear daughter. Please remember that we will all be together again someday.
Dear Diary, I bid goodnight as the fire is long spent and only embers remain. Mother's ink well has dried from over use and my bed with that last quilt she made for me beckons like her motherly embrace. Till tomorrow, may God keep us all in remembrance.
The Midnight Writer
