Hi folks,
Been a minute! I’m grateful to those who read and responded to the first Dear Sandy column, about being queer in rural spaces. If you want to send in a question for consideration for a future installment, please email whatshelpingtoday@gmail.com. Questions can be about gender or mental health or whatever. They can be short or long, though I may edit for concision. I won’t print your name. Thanks!
I wanted to send a quick newsletter this morning, remarking on this beautiful time of year here in the Catskills, specifically upon the goldenrod and aster. Perhaps those who’ve read the phenomenal book Braiding Sweetgrass will be familiar with this particular combination of flowers, their striking juxtaposition, yellow and purple. Practically anywhere I look right now, I see goldenrod and aster. The marshy meadow across the road is bursting with purple and yellow flowers, and also white ones and oranges and pinks and a maroon forsythia and an endless array of fading foliage.
Like many, I am struck with a combination of dread and anticipation this time of year, the last breaths of summer. I both fear and love the fall and the winter, those darker days. This year’s felt like nonstop chaos, in my life; days seem to whir by, each leaving even more yet to do. So though I know winter will bring its lows, I perhaps crave its comfort too. How up here in the mountains when it’s snowy, things feel somehow simpler.
And yet… how I also love this moment, the goldenrod and aster season. I love this moment so much and I don’t want it to end. I find myself looking at the flowers, hating that they’ll only be here so briefly and soon all will be dead.
Then I try to refocus this anticipatory heartbreak into something else: Gratitude. Basic, I know. But it’s so challenging, I find, this sort of perspective shift.
I sit meditating every day, still, even though it always feels hard. I slowly try to turn my head — whiny and raging — towards some less destructive way.
So, What’s Helping Today are goldenrod and aster. And their beauty. And their reminder that the present is both sacred and fleeting.
Alright that’s it for now. If it stops raining, I’m going to return to the garden, where I also spent much of the weekend. Big harvest time around here, getting chard and kale and celery and beans and pulverized tomatoes into the freezer. The frost will no doubt be here soon.
If you want, let me know what’s helping today. Again, to submit a question for the column, write whatshelpingtoday@gmail.com.
Hope you can try to take care of your spirits loves,
Sandy Ernest
p.s. Speaking of tomatoes, the greenhouse tomato experiment has been a tremendous success.
