Day 307

Future leaf-mould.

5.4 km at 7.24 minutes per km.  Only about 1 km was easy-going, strange.

Today was that sad kind of overcast day, the first of the cold to come, ice on the bird-bath, a memory of past winters, the bitter chill which rushes through doors left open for only a moment.

The feeling of being old, the knowledge of being in the autumn of life, just like the meadow, no longer fecund, bare-boned like the barren branches, the last blush of pretty leaves, and after that the slow decline.     

Neither daughter is coming home for Christmas, their favourite holiday.  Thoughtful presents, good food, lazy day, the family have never had an unhappy Christmas.  So, tears are shed in the kitchen, tears of longing for those two. 

Later, the boys come home from school, the tall handsome boys, and as they walk in the door cheerfulness returns like the sun.  They laugh and joke and give hugs and tickle the old mother.  It is No-shave November at their school, and they tell how they were joking with boys who have 5 o'clock shadow by 12 o'clock, whereas their beards take weeks to grow into any semblance of a beard!

What will happen when they have gone away to college?  It feels as though she will just stay sad, stuck in a ditch, wallowing all day in the heavyhearted cloudy world. 

A portrait as Friday Kahlo, two versions, one rubbed out for the other.  There is a set face that she draws whenever she has to draw a face, it is always the same face, and here it is in two variations.