When I was three I had shoulder length hair held back from my face with barrettes. My hair was light brown and very fine with just a bit of wave. Thanks to the pandemic I had been unable to get a haircut for five months. Although I have been cutting Charlie’s hair I didn’t want to risk having him cut mine. So I have been letting my short all over layered hair grow and grow for the first time since my 20’s. Once I had a short haircut, I never experimented, always going with about the same cut.

Two weeks ago I was finally able to see my hairdresser, both of us masked, with no one else in the salon, for a haircut. I had decided by then to try out a longer look and asked her to trim off the split ends of the layers and cut the rest to shoulder length. She told me that many of her clients were trying longer hair after having the chance to let it grow out. Others had stopped dying theirs.

My hair seventy years later is still light brown, very fine, with just a bit of wave, down to my shoulders with the shorter strands held back by barrettes. I guess everything old really is new again.

No, not that season, although a friend in the Philippines has already begun playing Christmas music. I mean the season of abundant harvest of fruit and vegetables. When I was three, I posed above with part of the bounty of my parents’ large backyard vegetable garden. My mother canned the tomatoes, but we ate and gave away the rest to neighbors and friends.

As a child in the 1950’s, I ate fresh food in season and canned food the rest of the year. My mother didn’t switch to frozen vegetables until I was in high school, but she still mostly used canned goods. She refused to buy “hothouse” tomatoes, maintaining(correctly) that they tasted like cardboard. The only fresh vegetables we had were carrots. While we ate bananas, oranges and cold storage apples all year, the rest of fruit was completely local and seasonal.

Sharing in the local farm’s produce each week, I am once again connected to the seasonal availability of fresh produce. Somehow after years of being able to buy anything any time of the year, whether from Chile or New Zealand, I had lost the instinctive knowledge I had as a kid about when I could eat a particular food. I am grateful to have the experience right now, especially as in so much of the pandemic I know neither the day or the month.

Here in the beginning of September the apples are just coming on, the corn is getting dryer, the zucchini larger, and the blueberries are done. Our own raspberry bushes are full of the fall variety and the grapes are being devoured by flocks of birds. Pretty soon I will be cooking the fall vegetables, including winter squash.

There is a rhythm to nature, and I am glad that it is still keeping her own sweet time, no matter the political or pandemic world.

When I was in grade school one of our favorite jokes ran along the lines of “When they handed out noses, I thought they said roses, And I ordered a big red one.” This came to mind when I read the comments responding to my post about leaving no trace. I realized I had caused the confusion by not posting the picture of the bands in the gym that I was discussing.

I actually loved the idea that several readers took from that post that I had music bands on the wall. That would actually be a much better idea. I could hang all the old devices for playing music there from my first transistor radio, through my cassette player, my phonograph, and on to my Ipod. The cacophony might drown out my groans as I work out!

Then when I was working the crossword puzzle this morning, I entered the word “ajar.” That took me back to fourth grade participating in a synonym activity. We lined up against the wall; she said a word and asked for a synonym. (I guess our teacher really was tired of our wriggling in our seats!) When she said “ajar,” I responded “a bottle.” While this provoked laughter, it sent me back to my seat.

So I certainly understand word confusion.”When they handed out brains, I thought they said trains, And I missed mine.”

I recently bought and used hooks to hang the various workout bands in my personal “gym.” I tried out Command Strips(no I don’t get any money for saying this) which are designed to be removed without leaving a mark on the wall. They are touted as leaving no trace. I haven’t had to remove them so far, so I can’t vouch for their ability, but it did make me think about the idea of not leaving a mark.

People love to leave their marks. Bathroom walls fill with phone numbers, slang comments, jokes and initials. Lovers carve their initials on trees. Soldiers couldn’t resist leaving “Kilroy was here.” I recently saw a film about the Vikings which showed graffiti left by a soldier hundreds of years ago etched into a stone railing.

Throughout my school years, we were handed textbooks in the fall which we handed back before summer vacation. We wrote our names in the front plate and laughed about who had used the books in previous years. We signed each others’ yearbooks and autograph books. Over and again we were determined to leave our mark, signifying that we were there.

When we had to replace our bathtub, we found that the chestnut beams supporting the tub had pencil marks from the carpenter as he built the house in 1929. He died the next year, ice fishing down the road, but his mark remained, hidden for us to find 85 years later. And I did pause and think of him, realizing he too once lived in the house we now think of as ours.