I used to think she was kinda nuts...

...my mom, I mean. I'd get home to find her sitting up, but not a light on. Just sitting in the dark. She would always laugh and remind us "that men loved darkness more than light because their deeds were evil." I seriously never quite got it.

I do now. Cindi never welcome the coming of fall and winter, but I do love the darkening evening. And often I'll sit in the living room, listening to music, lighted maybe by a dim lamp or just candles. There is something so utterly peaceful about the darkness. Looking out at the stars shining over Hamel, reading a page or twenty in the dim light (a bit of Tolkein at present), sipping a glass of wine. Remembering. The past seems so much nearer in the darkness than in the light. And to mom conveying a sense of the past was an important part of life itself. Aunt Annie, Mam Bette, Grandpappy Joe...people who lived long ago. She gave me a vibrant sense of them all.

It's still too warm for a fire, but that will come soon and then no need for another light at all. The light of the wood burning will be enough.

Tolkein did I say? Yes. He had one poem that always, always reminded me of mom:

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

That captures it. The darkness, the memories crowding around, and the hopeful listening for returning feet.