I stock the pantry with beans, set bowlfuls aside for creative bounty. We dip maples and oaks and sycamores into a melted-down pool of last winter’s candles, string a garland for the mantel. I launder the flannel sheets, ready the spiced cider pouches. We intend to write down the first frost on our calendar, but instead, we find ourselves scrawling less scientific markers of the season: the first bike ride requiring a sweater, the first leaf pile in the neighborhood, the first geese migration spotted over our favorite marsh.
My first miscarriage.
