The Day - A Piece For My Mum
The day, for me, is one of the most exciting and exhilarating days of the year. The Day is usually around the beginning of September. It’s that first morning where the balminess of summer has dispelled. You step out of your door in the morning and feel that tiny hint of something in the air, that almost undetectable trace of coolness, that lets you know that the fullness of summer is over, autumn is on its way and winter won’t be far behind.
The Day signals the end of summer, going back to school, the promise of darker nights with bonfires and fireworks and Christmas. It is the changing of the trees and walking through heaps of crunchy leaves by the side of the road. It is jumpers and boots, mittens and sparklers.
I love that feeling of anticipation that it brings. The feeling that something amazing is just around the corner. Also for me, it heralds the possibility of cold, crisp, frosty mornings, where the air burns your tubes and you can feel it, like iced water, travelling all the way into your lungs.
Something about this change to autumn stirs in me a need to create and DO things. Whether it is making jam, de-cluttering the house, going for massive walks out on the hills, there’s an in-built trigger in me that turns me into a demented woman for a couple of months. I wonder if it is some primeval thing to do with preparing for winter, storing provisions, battening down the hatches and ensuring that everything is in good shape to withstand the storms.
I’m sure that others feel it too. Why else is there such a hype about Hygge? All that cosyness and blankets in front of a log fire. It seems that the moment the temperature drops below 15 degrees these days, everyone gets their woolly hats out. People seem to embrace the change of seasons far more readily than before – very probably because it doesn’t hold the same threat of hardship that it did before the majority of houses had central heating and an indoor loo.
Once I was older and had left home, my mother and I would always phone each other. “Did you feel it? Did you feel that it’s the day today?” and usually we’d both have been heading to the phone at the same time to call each other.
My Mum died very suddenly in January, 12 years ago. She went to the doctor on the Friday, got taken straight into hospital and died on the Monday. For years before that, I worried about how I would cope when she died, how I would be able to function in a world that didn’t contain her. I would quite literally lose my breath thinking about it and it scared me like nothing else could. Well, once she had gone, I had my daughter still to look after and then also my father. I didn’t give myself time to grieve due to a full time job, a small daughter, an unsupportive partner and looking after my dad pretty much full time. I honestly don’t think that I drew breath properly until I got to the end of summer, opened the door one morning and stepped out into the most gorgeous morning; bright and clear with that first edge of freshness. I sat on the doorstep and for the first time in months let myself have a proper full on bawl. It was the first time that I had let myself go and dropped the mask of “coping”.
So, for me The Day holds a special place in my heart because of my Mum. It was the rocket I needed to start to face the fact that I needed to begin to put my life back together and face the fact that I was, actually, completely in bits still and not actually coping at all.
Traditions like The Day mean that my Mum is still with me. Christmas and birthdays too, but for me the most very special is something that was just ours and that we shared in our hearts, our love of nature, our joy in the changing seasons, the sense that the world is yours to take and there are endless possibilities ahead of you, no matter how old you are.
The tradition lives with my own daughter. She awaits the day every year, testing the air in the mornings and waiting for the change. She loves to ring me to tell me it’s here – and loves it even more if we are heading for the phone at the same time. For me, I love the fact that The Day is still alive and still an important date in our family calendar and I send a message up to the sky, to my Mum, hoping that she is still enjoying the coolness after the heat of summer.
Written by Sarah-Jane
Sarah-Jane lives in Bridgwater, Somerset with her dog, Daphne and her partner, Simon. She loves walking and nature and volunteers for WWT at Steart Marshes. She also loves crafting and wishes she was actually Kirstie Allsopp (and had her frock collection).