Fall light and unpacking

It' s officially fall today. About seven PM, I turned the lights on. It was just gray enough outside that the warm yellow glow made the house feel cozy and closed in. After a summer of open windows, of house and outdoors as one, that makes it fall. The inside environment no longer merges with outdoors. The windows are closed. The First Fire will surely take place in the woodstove within the next week or so...well maybe later if we have the warm, golden fall they predict.

I unpacked all the things I brought from my parents' house today. My father died three years ago and my stepmom is moving into an assisted living place. So I hauled the hand woodworking tools home, the table saw, the many cans of nails, screws, nuts, bolts that this Depression child hoarded. Well, I'm his daughter. I have my own cans of pried out nails, old hinges. Hey, it's how I have managed to raise two kids on what I make as a writer. So I added his hoard to mine. We're set for buiding things for a long time, we are.

I also brought over the hammered brass shields that my grandfather was given by the aboriginal tribes in the Sumatran jungles, the small household god from India, the cow incense burner, also from India, that my grandmother owned. The ancient metal teapot and burner from Sumatra, used by the very old 'straights-born' Chinese to brew small cups of very strong tea.

Some of these are probably valuable antiques. Other things are junk. They are, of course, all fraught with memory.

It's fall. The light is warm inside.