Another autumn... of gale

Autumn or fall, both names trigger that mellow feeling of change. To me this season is about a new start, crisp mornings, morning dew, every day a new sensation of nature’s breathtaking colours.

Rainy afternoons when you slow down and stay indoors to read with a mug of hot chocolate topped with whipped cream in your hand, or the occasional warm and sunny hours to spend in the garden; preparing everything for a healthy, empowering winter sleep. Anticipating the early spring sunny days when everything is brought back to life and bloom.

Pretty laid-back and almost romantic, isn’t it? Well, those are the feelings I get when thinking about this season, and it is puzzles me why it is so.

As I am experiencing this season right now, I both live and remember what it is really like, and it is nothing of the sort I think of it being like.

Working life is hectic and straining. I get to meet new students, and they all have their own history to tell about what school is like for them. We try to give who need it a new start; to give them new possibilities to show what they actually know, instead of proving them wrong. It takes a lot of time and patience. To gain the trust of young people who have experienced failure way too often demand advanced tiptoe dancing between choice of words, choice of reaction and knowing when it is important to listen carefully. Often they disguise their problems in rude language or acting up.

Noone acts up because they are looking for trouble, there is always a reason. Most of the time it happens because this is how they have behaved in the past, and it is the only way they know how to behave. I understand why they do it: to talk about feelings is very hard. To find the right words is sometimes just too hard. As an adult it is important to ask the right questions to find out what is going on in their mind. We can’t perform magic, and we don’t read minds.

At home this is the time of year when the pile of laundry is at its biggest. The warm summer rain is history, now we get cold showers of rain, which often falls in all directions following the moody whims of the wind. Ones again the kids wear disagreeable rainwear and waterproof boots. Being hampered by what they wear, after a summer when shorts gave them freedom to be wild and vast and free.

The wet nature causes wet clothes, muddy boots, grass stained trousers and jumpers, the numerous changes of socks empty the sock drawer in no time.

Soccer season is at its most hectic, and towels pile up in the laundry basket and on the bathroom floor.

Beginning of the school year is an affliction for parents. Everything is to be read thrice with an adult, an adult must sign for homework done in every subject. An adult must check the kid knows the new words added to the vocabulary in foreign languages… it’s like we’re back in school; missing out on the lessons, but doing the homework.

Once again I leave the house every morning, having packed lunches and gym bags and satchels. Carrying five bags and outerwear for every kind of weather. There is no way I can keep up appearance, even though I started out pretty presentable.

This is the season when I never have a good hair day. Using an umbrella is very adult, but pointless. The rain is pouring down horizontally, and the umbrella dances in all directions… unless it turns inside out and point forward, like a satellite dish ready to  receive messages from the weather gods.

We have those crisp, sunny days, when the wind is still. But somehow they are easily forgotten in the overwhelming impact of autumn gale.