An Autumn {love} Story
The coming of Autumn always causes a feeling of melancholy in me, so profound I can almost taste it. It’s a kind of delicious flavour. There is something indulgent about savouring memories of long, warm summer days, feasting on the last bursts of colour, and not being able to help but feel a bit sad when the last of nature's bounty has gone. It is, after all, just so more-ish.
My recipe for for dealing with the sadness is warmth. Steaming soups, sourdough toast, melted butter for our bellies. Wool, wool and more wool over our shoulders, hands, heads. I unwrap all our jumpers with a sense of importance, and the kids just think it's funny to try on all of last year's hats at once.
Usually Autumn is brief here; King Winter comes swiftly and mercilessly, stifling everything for almost 6 months. But this year has been strangely warm, and so at the beginning of November, when I would not expect there to be a single leaf left anywhere, I found myself with the chance to photograph a new design outside.
Not inside, struggling with the lack of natural light and wracking my brains for appealing props, but out in the soft glow of the Autumn sun and marvelling at how much there still remained to enjoy.
Well, photograph the new design was the intention. I got distracted by the model.
With two small children and two jobs, life is full. Very often good-full but also challenging-full, and in either case there is very little time or space for us to just be. Ourselves, a couple.
Even this session was typically rushed; We wolfed down our lunch at a local cafe, spent just half an hour messing about with light and leaves and sleeves. Then it was straight back to work before the evening shift of dinner-bath-bed-COLLAPSE.
It was a nice half an hour though. Full of soft light. Of observing and connecting, however briefly. Of remembering a Before, with melancholy. For just a short while, all the drudgery, loneliness and friction that inevitably make up the darker side of an intense relationship sort of faded into the background.
I can't believe it's been 10 years since he wandered into my office 5 times a day, under the pretense of needing to use the photocopier. He's a good 'un, my husband (and he's hot, in my unbiased opinion). Although he wouldn't give me back my cardigan.
