Appreciating the Fall Colors

Never fear, I’m not going to wax poetic about the wonders of Texas’ fall foliage. But, since it’s the time of year people like to slip the word foliage into conversation, it got me thinking about the color schemes of autumn.

Even if Central Texas doesn’t conform to the ideal, we all know the pumpkin orange and scarlet and golden yellow we’re supposed to associate with this time of harvest and changing leaves.

But as I rove my mind’s eye across the hearty abundance of colors I see around our homestead, there are some less familiar hues worth noting.

I see deep vermillion in the embarrassed cheeks of the 4-year-old after he gets caught stealing Halloween candy from the pantry. Shame comes in many colors, but its most recognizable shade of red is vermillion.

I see the bright cyan of my daughter’s eyes as she gleefully waves to me from her bucket swing in the backyard. Everything in her gaze is lemon sunshine even when the backdrop is a steely feldgrau sky.

I see gamboge flames in a fire pit surrounded by boys whose faces oscillate between glowing and flickered with shadows. The firelight shows them at once in the prime of their youth and also many years older. Soon it won’t be only in the shadows that they wear the countenance of young men.

The 11-year-old noted the autumn twilight horizon always seems to be a rainbow of color. Ranging from pale azure and celadon, through periwinkle and puce the sunsets of fall do provide a spectacle of color and remind not just observant 11-year-olds of the everyday beauty in nature.

These colors are around us every day, although we rarely stop to notice them. We do the same with the life going on around us every day. We pause on the fourth Thursday of November for a moment of thankfulness yet the gifts that we’re surrounded by are worthy of gratitude all year.

The colors of a well-supplied Thanksgiving table can dazzle the eye (and the appetite). Dishes of coquelicot cranberries, ocher pumpkin pies, sage stuffing, glossy russet roasted turkey, and pearly mashed potatoes – who doesn’t appreciate that?

But it’s funny how we always seem to appreciate the gift more than the giver. We’re thankful for the turkey over the cook, the get-together over the family, the blessings over the God who blesses us.

From the colors of fall, to the food on the table, to the people around it – all are good and gracious gifts that deserve more than an annual nod of gratitude. A generalized feeling of appreciation or arbitrary thankfulness misses the mark.

Because when you talk about Thanksgiving (giving thanks) you can’t give thanks to no one. So, give thanks to the cook for the meal and to your friends for their presence and to your family for their love. And thank God for it all.

You may not get more gifts for which to be thankful. But that’s never the point of gratitude. Gratefulness to the Giver means acknowledging the beauty in even the most drab colors.   

Happy Thanksgiving, all.