This morning was so pretty and so fallish. “It was a beautiful autumn day with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it,” Diana Gabaldan. Wish I written that description of a fall day. Fits today perfectly. I’ve been on the porch all day being lazy. Moving from swing to swing when the sun got too hot on the porch. The butterflies have been enjoying the last of summer’s blooms. I’m mesmerized by the crayon yellow of the butterflies when they light on the red geraniums. Nature just has such a wonderful spectrum of colorings.

I’m sitting on the porch late afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee from my favorite bird pattern coffee cup, watching the dusk cover the earth with its first layer of nighttime. The chimney swifts are performing their aerobatics in mid air and the cardinals are getting their last bite of sunflower seeds for the night. I think the gloaming might be the prettiest part of the day today. The silence of the earth as she prepares for bed is comforting.

Father Sky just kissed Mother Nature and the sun good night and filled the horizon with a blush of the palest pink. The pageant of today’s sunset is muted but magnificent. The marbled sky is faint with gray and blue but the pink blush is creeping up on the horizon and putting rogue on the surrounding clouds. I hope I never lose my enchantment with a sunset.

Life is like the sunset and the sunrise. We know when the sun slides down on the late afternoon horizon she’ll be back the next day in all her glory. Just as our lives ebb and flow with happiness and disappoint we know these days won’t last forever. We don’t need to hold on to yesterday’s sunrise but need to move forward to the sunrise of another day. We need to appreciate the sunsets in our lives and not try to control the colors. Accept ourselves as we truly are and bask in our uniqueness. We don’t have to be the most vibrant color on the spectrum of a glorious sunset. We can be the pale blush that gives peace to the coming darkness. If you’re the flaming red and glowing orange of your life’s sunset, keep it up. Takes all kinds and all colors to make the world go round.

In a way, at this point in my life, I feel like I’m riding off into the beautiful sunset. My life has been filled and is filled with genuine deep love, enough tragedy to break me down, and a strong faith that pulls me up when I call on it. I’ve finished with my employment years and can sit back in the sunset of my life and fill my days with family and friends on my own time and my own schedule. I can be a pale blush in the gloaming or a vibrant purple on Mother Nature’s paint brush. Sunsets show us that the end can be just as beautiful as the beginning.

“Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn,” — Ralph Waldo Emerson.