Signs of Change

Sunset on Minneapolis’ Lake Harriet, August 30 - by Steven Mosborg

I was triggered last week by an email from our friendly insurance broker, with our annual reminder to prepare for a health insurance check in within the next couple of months. First sign of changing seasons - that and the leaves that are beginning to fall from our old oak tree that is struggling again with the effects of this drought period.

I’m so not ready for summer to be over. It feels like we’ve just begun the lazy hazy days of the season with its required lounging and a book. I still have friends I want to have over on the porch, and restaurants with outdoor patios that beckoned in May will too soon be frozen over. 

Yet I do love fall. Once you’ve spent twelve of your formative years in the preparations for the start of school, the season becomes the harbinger of exciting newness ahead. I still buy a new pen every fall - although now, it’s more like pen refill cartridges. 

We have the fall holidays as well, filled with new recipes to add to the old standards for Rosh Hashanah. And in this household, the old standards have a Mediterranean bent. No brisket for this crowd. It’s fun to dress up the dining room a bit, pull out the good china, and dust off the pots and platters for the sticky art of dipping challah and apples into honey pots. 

Seasonal change is one of the things we missed in Southern California where the weather was always beautiful and the leaves never fell. Now I just miss the people from Southern California who made that sojourn such a marvelous experience. 

The other change coming into focus is the series of health shifts we’re experiencing in our current decade of life. No one in this house ever had allergies or asthma, but it turns out that a lifetime of exposure to particulates, and some of the new allergens making their way into Minnesota, can trigger all sorts of responses. Suddenly we have a ready supply of allergy pills and inhalers as ragweed blows and dust fills the air. 

We will adapt. Life is too interesting to avoid going outside for long. We’ve simply added to our check list - keys, wallet, phone, and now, inhaler and tissues.

I’ve also learned that when adapting to change, it really helps to have a cohort along with you. Today, for example, I woke up convinced it was Monday. It isn’t. It’s Tuesday - so I was blithely toodling along doing Monday things as my Tuesday agenda took place without me. 

You have to be a certain age to understand what I’m talking about. And fortunately, I have a whole gang of childhood, college, and grown up friends who have achieved my current decade who understand perfectly what that means. 

And that’s always been true for those of us Baby Boomers who have caused much of the change we’re all experiencing.