We all have them, the dither on the cusp of a new thing. Summer and Autumn obviously feel the same. Autumn comes in with a bag of chillswag in the morning, clouding windows, cold to the touch and bringing shivers into the house, the snatch and pull of a warm cardigan around a human body. I can hear her chuckle as I do this very thing. And, as the day moves on, the temperature rises until I am here at almost 5pm barely frocked and with the sun almost burning. It thinks me.

I have dithered many, oh many times, on that cusp. Trusting that whatever I did or didn’t do would breach the void, move some situation on. I have stood there, often, skidding on the rocks of slippery, hesitant, wondering, doubting and very much alone. But there is something about being there in the first place. What brought me here? a question requiring an answer and, from what was around me at the time, nobody else was in answering mode. Is that what it comes to……..nobody but me to step across the void, to acknowledge there is no-one there at all? Perhaps. It’s lonely though.

On the obverse side of this I can see that it isn’t just me who make decisive choices plus impact and, possibly, initiating chaos. Even as a young mother, I did face all of that. I was the one who found myself, discovered myself, on the slippery rocks, and who stepped on. Looking back to my then situation, there was nobody else who would have even got there, nor wanted to, the whole maintenance of equilibrium, the status quo, being an absolute. For so many years I doubted myself, this crazy skidder on rocks, the one who yelled Enough! and worked on the change. Maybe it’s a generation thing. My peers conformed after all. I was born different. All through school I disagreed, and was silenced or expelled. Now I live with that self and can see her as before her time, the rebel, the one who actually did make a difference in so many ways, in business decisions, in the lives of my children, in the community, in my own life.

So, I recognise Autumn, the proud mother that she is, and welcome her. I also feel a great affection for Summer as she, unwillingly diminishes. I have loved her light and her warmth, but she needs her rest now. However, the combination sisterhood of these two proud seasons does bring the most glorious of surprise light. I think I love the cusp, the liminal dilemma.

Perhaps I see myself in this.