Living in Two Seasons at Once

The first thing I noticed was the dew.

The grass was silver with it when I came downstairs, far heavier than anything we had seen through most of the summer. The morning itself was cool, and the light coming through the kitchen window had that slightly watery quality it takes on at this time of year. Yet by afternoon, the windows were open again and the day was warm enough to feel unmistakably like summer.

Later, a lamp was switched on while the window beside it remained open. That small domestic contradiction seemed to contain the whole of early September.

The outdoors sounds different too. I have never been quite able to explain what changes, only that it begins to sound somehow more hollow. The fullness of high summer has gone from it, even on a warm day. There is more space between the sounds. The evenings quieten earlier.

Darkness is arriving noticeably sooner. The French doors that stayed open until nearly midnight during the height of summer are gradually being closed earlier, even when the air is still mild. For a while, we will keep the windows open and turn on the lamps. Summer will remain outside while the house begins to behave as though autumn is coming.

It has been an unusually dry summer here in Ireland. For weeks, the grass and hedgerows looked parched and brown, and some of the leaves began to turn earlier than they usually would. Then the rain eventually came and everything seemed to lift again, although there are still signs everywhere of just how little water we had.

The fruit in the garden is approaching harvest. Apples, pears and plums are growing heavier on the trees. The strawberries have reached the point where they can look perfect in the morning and be overripe and soft by that evening. There is a sense of abundance, but also of needing to pay attention.

The kitchen begins to change before the weather fully does. I find myself thinking about baking again, about slow-cooker dinners, batch cooking and what we might freeze for busier weeks. I start making September meal plans and thinking about school lunches.

And then we light a campfire and have a barbecue in the garden that same evening.

Neither part of the day is pretending. We really are preparing for autumn, and we really are still living in summer.

I have loved this summer. It has felt remarkably long, perhaps because we have had so many warm, dry days, but also because the pace of our home has been different. I have loved waking early without immediately needing to get dressed. I have loved knowing that nobody has to be anywhere urgently and that we might not leave the house until half past ten.

The whole household has operated at a slightly slower pace. Days have had shape, but not too much of it. Plans could change without creating a complicated chain reaction. Meals could happen later. Mornings could stretch. There has been a looseness around time that is difficult to reproduce once school, work and activities begin dictating where everyone needs to be.

I do not want to wish that away. I do not want to treat summer as though it has already finished simply because the school supplies have been bought and autumn has begun appearing on my screen.

I wrote recently about wanting to Stay Here a Little Longer, and I still feel that way.

But another feeling has begun to exist alongside it. I am looking forward to some structure again.

I like knowing what the week looks like. I like knowing where everybody needs to be and when they will be home. I like the distinction between weekdays and weekends, and the particular feeling of Friday being Friday again. I look forward to family dinners around the table, regular exercise, more settled evenings and reading before bed instead of looking up and wondering how it became so late.

It is easy to imagine that slow living and structure sit on opposite sides of some imaginary divide. One represents spaciousness and ease; the other represents timetables, obligations and rushing.

I no longer think it is quite that simple.

Routine can be an anchor. When I know roughly how the day will work, I do not have to hold every possibility in my head at once. A dependable rhythm can create space because certain things have already been decided. It does not have to mean filling every hour or trying to make the household more efficient. Sometimes it simply means that the day has somewhere to rest.

I can love the freedom of summer and still crave the steadiness of September. Wanting one does not make my appreciation of the other less genuine.

Looking forward to the next thing does not make it arrive any faster. Autumn will come when it comes, regardless of how many recipes I save or how early the shops begin selling pumpkins.

I can collect ideas for baking without making them yet. I can prepare the house for cooler weather without pretending the colder weather has arrived. I can buy school supplies and make September meal plans while continuing to sit outside in the evening.

Preparation does not have to mean departure.

This can be difficult to remember because the commercial calendar is always so far ahead of our actual lives. The shops, YouTube, Pinterest and social media feeds begin moving into the next season while many of us are still very much living in the current one.

I say this as somebody who genuinely loves seasonal decorating. I have always enjoyed autumn decorations, Halloween, Christmas decorating videos, seasonal mugs, autumn hauls and all the little pieces people bring out to change the feeling of their homes.

I am not opposed to any of it. I can happily watch somebody decorate an entire house for autumn when it is still warm enough here to eat dinner outside.

Over the past couple of years, however, I have pared back my own seasonal possessions. It began partly through becoming more conscious of our budget, but I also realised that I simply had too much. I had decorations I rarely used and things I had bought because they looked lovely in somebody else’s home or on a shop shelf, rather than because they meant anything in ours.

I donated what I was no longer using and kept the pieces I genuinely enjoy bringing out each year. Increasingly, I mix those favourites with branches, leaves, fruit and other things gathered from the garden.

The decorating itself was never the problem. The problem was the small but persistent feeling that because the next season was already happening on my screen, I ought to be living in it too.

Just because it is happening there does not mean it has to be happening in our real lives.

“There” might be a shop, a YouTube video, a Pinterest board or an algorithm that has decided we have seen enough summer and should now be thinking about Halloween. It can be enjoyable without becoming an instruction.

There is, of course, a contradiction in my saying this. Seasonal publishing requires working ahead. While encouraging readers to allow August to remain August, I have been creating Halloween and Christmas content behind the scenes.

There are days when my laptop is firmly in December while my actual life is still outside in the August sunshine.

It is a slightly peculiar way to work, but creating something for Christmas does not mean I am personally living in Christmas. My work can be several months ahead while the rest of me remains exactly where I am.

Perhaps that distinction matters beyond seasonal content too. Our thoughts can begin moving towards what is next without dragging the whole of our lives along with them.

We tend to give a great deal of significance to beginnings and endings. We notice the first day, the final day, the arrival, the departure and the moment something officially changes. The period in between is often treated as an inconvenient corridor we must pass through on the way from one real thing to another.

But the in-between is a legitimate season.

It is where we look back and notice what has changed. It is where we take stock, begin adjusting and slowly become ready for whatever is next. We are no longer entirely where we were, but we have not fully arrived somewhere new either.

September embodies that particularly clearly. It holds warm afternoons and cooler mornings, open windows and early lamps, barbecues and thoughts of slow-cooker dinners. The old rhythm has loosened, and the new one has not quite settled.

Transitions can be exciting and still be exhausting. Even a welcome return to school or work asks something of a household. Sleep changes. Meal times change. People need to remember where their shoes, bags and keys are again. Everybody has to recalibrate.

Recently, I explored some of these ideas in a newsletter, and the thoughtful responses I received reinforced something I have come to understand more clearly as I have grown older.

Two things can be completely true at the same time.

Someone can be living through an extremely difficult period and still experience moments of genuine joy. Sadness and laughter can occupy the same life. We can feel deeply grateful for what we have and still long for something more.

The joy does not invalidate the difficulty. The difficulty does not make the joy false.

This is not an argument that painful experiences happen for a reason, or that hardship is secretly useful if we can only find the lesson hidden inside it. Some things are simply painful and unfair. It is only an acknowledgement that human emotional life is rarely as orderly as we sometimes expect it to be.

I recognise this most clearly when I think about my own life.

I deliberately chose a more home-centred way of living. Being available at home has allowed me to create steadiness for my family during a period when that mattered enormously. I value that role. For the most part, I love the life I have created around it.

But another truth exists too.

Sometimes I feel as though I am playing a supporting role rather than the main role in my own life. Sometimes it seems that everybody else’s life is happening partly because I am there to make it possible.

I do not feel resentful about that. I enjoy supporting the people I love, and I chose to be here.

But occasionally I find myself thinking, maybe it could be my turn in the limelight.

I do not want to rush to soften that thought until it means nothing. I can love being the primary homemaker and caregiver in our family, value being available to the people who need me and still want independence, creativity and a place in the world that belongs specifically to me.

Those wants do not cancel one another out.

There are several versions of me here at the same time. There is the homemaker and mother, the caregiver, the writer, the blogger and content creator, the teacher, and the part of me still wondering what I might want next.

I do not have to decide today which one is the definitive version.

The teacher has not vanished because I am writing. The homemaker does not disappear because I want creative independence. The writer does not invalidate the caregiver. They are not competing identities from which I must eventually select the most authentic one.

My writing and creative work have increasingly become something that belongs particularly to me. It is where I think, make, write and put my own ideas into the world. That may be why its recent growth has mattered to me in ways that have very little to do with numbers.

Something of my own has been quietly growing during a period when so much of my life has been centred on supporting other people.

I can be proud of that and still be uncertain about what comes next. I can love the life I have chosen and wonder what else I might want from it. Perhaps living well does not always mean resolving the tension between two truths. Sometimes it means allowing both to exist.

By evening, the light outside the kitchen window has thinned. The September meal plan may be sitting on the counter while the smell of the campfire still clings to my clothes. The fruit in the garden is nearly ready, but the windows remain open to the mild air.

Then someone switches on the lamp.

Summer has not quite finished. Autumn has begun to gather at the edges of things.

For now, that is simply where we are.

Chat very soon,

Ciara x

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Living in Two Seasons at Once
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