October is also the month of birthdays in my family, my son and my niece were born in October so I know there are parties to go to and parties to plan. None of this makes October any easier to bear. Sometimes I wake up and the heaviness of the month just bears down to my soul, I miss my Mother and her cooking, her warmth, and just her being here with me.
I miss looking forward to my Uncles next visit and mostly I miss my nephews smile and laughter. Yet year after year, I look forward to October more than any other month of the year. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I enjoy the decorations of orange and black, also because they are Giant colors so Halloween to me, is so San Francisco. I love that dead things are glorified and put on display as decorations, there is an eerie weirdness to decorating with headstones, witches, skeltons and goblins. I love it.
I love October, it is the portal to the rest of the holiday season, we start to get three day weekends in October and then they morph into a two day week in November, followed by a great two week vacation in December oh joy! It's only October and I am planning out the end of my year. I can not wait. This is what October means to me.
So as I walk my city streets, crumbling the dry leaves under my feet I remember my loved ones and I remember that summer has ended again. I do not know how many other summers I have left under my belt and how many more loved ones I will say good bye to in October, this year Steve Jobs joined my October death watch and the whole world mourned, now they know how I feel about October. It is still early in the month and I tread carefully until October 31st, when all the evil things have full sway on this earthly realm, so I wait, watch, live and breath October.
