We have a traditional celebration called Pyanepsia, which is adapted from an ancient Greek festival. It is one of my favorite holidays of the year because it brings my darlings together for an evening of community, food, and thanksgiving. It’s a festival in honor of the changing of the seasons, from the outer to the inner, from the light into the darkness.

We use heaps of bay laurel.

We feast on fine foods, bean stews, and wine.

We make candles.

This year, we dipped autumn leaves in beeswax to preserve them. Why not, when we were making candles anyway?

We make a giant communal eirisione, hung with wool and trinkets, evidence of our many blessings, in the hopes we will continue to be so blessed. Many thanks to our gracious hosts. xoxo

Last weekend we had a marvelous Adventure Day! Featuring … grandparents and SCIENCE! We met up with Ian’s dad, Glen, and his girlfriend, Miriam, and we all drove to San Francisco to visit the Exploratorium and nearby SF sights. If you ever get the chance to go to the Exploratorium, seize it.

“So why don’t all exhibits have scientific explanations?
The Exporatorium is about discovering things for yourself. We want to spark your curiosity not just give you facts. That’s why you won’t find explanations at every exhibit. Facts and explanations are important, and you will find them here. But finding things out by experimenting, by playing around, is what science is all about.

So mess about. Explore your hunches. Follow your curiosity. See what happens.”

Today is a very full day. We are attending Lucas’s third-grade Eurythmy performance of The Firebird this afternoon. We are also attending a Martinmas potluck and lantern walk with Asher’s preschool this evening. Both of these events are happy and exciting. Both are dampened by my grief over Nana’s death yesterday.

Part of me would like for everything to feel normal. A part of me thinks it’s crazy to be normal—working on freelance projects, worrying about deadlines, arranging babysitting, and attending school functions—at a time like this. But, of course, life goes on.

And isn’t that a miracle?

In the midst of a busy and rich life, we pause to grieve. In the midst of a sad time, we snatch moments of elation and joy, pride and comfort to buoy us up. There is a symmetry there, a balance.

Both darkness and light.

I don’t know what to think or feel, but lighting a candle seemed right.

My boys pretty much lost interest in Halloween candy immediately. They had loads of it and we kept it around for five days. They asked for one piece of candy in five days. Lucas even asked if he could give all of his candy away to the Halloween Fairy.

We let Lucas and Asher save out a few choice pieces of candy for occasional special treats. Then we put all the rest of the candy in a big bowl and left it outside. We called into the night to the Halloween Fairy and told her that we had lots of candy for her to feed to her babies (who need sugar to live, like Hummingbirds, don’t ya know). We called and called, and then went to bed feeling certain that she had heard us.

In the morning, we found she had taken all the candy we had left out, and in return she left Lucas and Asher some Legos and notebooks, and these friendly little monsters.

I’m looking into this program, The Halloween Candy Buy Back. We may have missed the opportunity, since it’s already a week after Halloween, but it sounds like a great program. Local dentists buy back (or accept) Halloween candy donations from kids, and Operation Gratitude sends it in care packages to U.S. soldiers serving overseas.

Oh, preschoolers!

Yesterday Asher was playing pretend, as he does much of the time now. He described to me in great detail what kind of animal he was: “A really cute turtle that can fly with his wings,” except he had T-Rex back legs with claws of bats, turtle front legs with claws of “butterfly ladybugs,” knees of a hippo, and a turtle head with one fish eye and one T-Rex eye. And he hatched from an egg and rode around on a motorcycle made of laundry (despite having wings), rescuing sock babies.

My darlings both embraced Halloween with gusto this year, and a surprising amount of steadfastness—I half expected Asher to change his mind a few times about his costume. Whatever Lucas said to his little brother that made Asher want to be Hedwig the owl to Lucas’s Harry Potter, it stuck.

Lucas made a fantastic Harry Potter. He embodied Harry’s goodness and bravery, and only became more and more excited with each costume piece we gathered. We are very happy with grandma’s sweater and the purchased Gryffindor robe. (I suspect Lucas will get many joyful hours of play out of this robe.)

Asher’s costume was such fun for me! When he announced he wanted to be Hedwig, I easily saw how I could create it myself and forgo the store-bought Hedwig costume (with its impossibly tall and presumably heavy stuffed owl hood). I googled “snowy owls” and looked at some pictures. Then I spent $21 on the “angel” wings, boa, white mask, and black felt for the beak. I bought the sweat pants and hoodie sweatshirt from an Amazon shop. It took very little time to sew on the white boa. Technically, I spent a little more money on this than I would have for the premade owl costume, but I can take the feathers off this and Asher will have …  clothes. (Granted, they are white clothes—somewhat incompatible with little boys. But still …)

We had such a fun and busy day on the 31st. Lucas went to a Halloween party at some friends’ house. Asher and I had a marvelous time at the Sacramento Waldorf School’s Pumpkin Path, which I’ll write about later. We all met up again just before dark and had just enough time to eat a simple dinner and go trick-or-treating. (I wish I had some daylight pictures of them together.)

Asher wore a serious “owl face” much of the time (with smiles peeking through) and only hooted (“Hoo hoo!”) the whole time we were out. Grandma VoVo and Tolly joined us for trick-or-treating, as did Auntie and Uncle-to-Be. (Thanks guys!)

Harry and his entourage. Bit like a movie poster, isn’t it?

And even with all that good kid-style fun, Ian and I still got to go to two parties! With grown-ups. And each other. Yay! Fact is, we all adore Halloween, and any reason to play dress-up!

Happy Samhain. Dance around the fires! Welcome the Dark! We hope your Halloween was full of good mischief and sweet play, like ours.

Jack-O’-Lantern, Jack-O’-Lantern,
Your light it doth shine,
Sitting up upon the window
And your light it is mine.

You were once an orange pumpkin
Sitting on a sturdy vine,
Now you are a Jack-O’-Lantern,
And in the night you will shine.

We had a little pumpkin carving party last night. It started with an impromptu play date with R. She and Lucas got in my car at the end of the school day and immediately started clamoring to play together. Why not? Luckily, R’s mother said yes!

They obliged me with this sweet photo. Both Lucas and Asher love it when R comes to play!

Meanwhile, I made vegetable soup with all kinds of goodness: butternut squash, leeks, onions, peas, garbanzos, carrots, parsnips, celery, beet greens and rice. I baked bread, too. The house smelled terrific!

Later on, more friends joined us for a potluck and some jack-o’-lantern fun. Anytime Lucas gets to use a knife, he’s happy. (He’s asking when he can have a pocket knife for whittling. Yikes!)

Here he his working on a pumpkin that we grew in our garden!

R’s ghostly pumpkin turned out great. Parnassus helped X out with his.

Asher drew his pumpkin’s face and I carved it for him. Too cute.

The talented Miss T, aka Snow, worked hard to make the grossest jack possible. She’s planning to spill the pumpkin guts out of her jack-o’-lantern’s mouth, as if it’s throwing up. Yuck

Didn’t manage to get everyone in the frame here, but I think you can tell we had some fun. Later the Blooms showed up and we all ate a yummy dinner. Much thanks to Parnassus for the yummy salad, green beans, and pumpkin pies! Frostee got to satisfy a craving for pancakes in honor of her grandfather.

And the Giants won.

Sunday morning we all went to West Sacramento’s Raley Field to participate in the Walk Now for Autism Speaks 2010 walk. (According to their website, they raised more than $196,600.) This was my first time at such an event, and we were all surprised at the turnout. We met up with some of Ian’s coworkers and walked from the baseball field to the Capitol and back.

We saw Stormtroopers and sat in Hercules’ lap, enjoyed beautiful Capitol Mall without traffic, and got to walk on the Tower Bridge. The weather was warm and pretty, people were friendly, and the kids got lollies. I’m so impressed with their stamina! Asher was carried a bit on the way back, but they both participated (almost) without complaint.

Afterward, we celebrated with burgers and fries at Rubicon brewpub. I have to say, Rubicon’s black and bleu burger packs a wallop, but the organic pomegranate cider helped. We came home and napped in the afternoon. Just right.

I promise this is my last post about Michaelmas. Maybe I got carried away a bit, but I already mentioned that this festival kind of spoke to me a lot this year.

We had a special dinner on Friday night after the school’s Michaelmas festival. (We have lots of special dinners, but usually Ian cooks them. This one was a joint effort.) As far as I’m concerned, any dinner featuring homemade bread and a first course is special. Anyway, my parents joined us and it was kind of both Michaelmas and a celebration of Ian’s birthday.

I couldn’t get Asher to join in this activity, but Lucas, Daddy and I all enjoyed shaping dragon breads. The bread recipe I used ended up being so wet and sticky I had to keep adding more and more cups of flour. It turned out yummy, but we ended up with far more bread dough than we needed!

We shaped three handsome dragon loaves and were able to send an unbaked loaf home with Grandma and Papa. Here are our dragons before they were baked. They are embellished with almond slices, dried cranberries, and dried mango, which we snipped into pointy plates and scales.

Our Michaelmas table set for dinner outside in the warm autumn evening. That’s Lucas’s sword he made for Michaelmas last year in second grade.

Lucas picked my dragon bread to eat first. He was dumbstruck when I handed him the good bread knife and asked if he would do us the honor of slaying the dragon for us. He did a great job slicing the bread for everyone.

I didn’t take a picture of my red lentil soup, but here’s the main course: dragon (grilled chicken thighs, sauteed spinach scales, sour cream, almond slices for toes, and a carved red bell pepper head.) I have to admit, carving and arranging this was super fun. Seeing the kids’ faces when I brought this out was the best! Thanks for grilling the chicken, Ian!

Okay. That’s it. Now I can start thinking about Halloween.

September

Dear apple, on your branch,
please fall into my hat.
For if I take you off the tree,
They’ll not be pleased with that!

Apples red and apples green,
please fall down upon the ground.
For if I pick you off the tree,
I cannot say how you’ve been found.

Apples here and apples there,
please fall into my hand.
My little sisters stand and stare
and wait for you to land.

Hips and haws and thistles tall
stand all around the tree.
All will soon be picked and stored.
Is there not just one for me?

Apples, apples, everywhere,
please let me have just one,
and just two more, please, tree,
then September will be done.

Goodness, I cannot wait to go to Apple Hill!

I am not the only one in love with Elsa Beskow books—they are practically as much a staple in the Waldorf world as fresh bread and vegetable barley soup. And I’ll also admit that I love this book, Around the Year, more than my children do, partly because I appreciate poetry and they’re not quite so keen on it, and partly because they simply don’t pay too much attention to the months of the year. They live in the moment and experience what’s now. But that’s why these month poems by Beskow are great, in my opinion. They capture the quality and feeling of each month from a child’s perspective. I think this book is a keeper, meaning it might just be delightful to my kids for many years, rather than something they’ll quickly outgrow.