The Month for Painted Leaves: Nine Steps for Living an October Life

By John-Manuel Andriote

In The Month for Painted Leaves, New England native John-Manuel Andriote looks to nature, the natural changes time makes in our bodies, our life's losses and sorrows, ancient wisdom, modern science, and the passage of time itself for lessons on living an authentic, deliberate, powerful life that are relevant for

• Language: English
• Publisher: John-Manuel Andriote
• Release date: Oct 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798891216709

Book preview

THE MONTH FOR PAINTED LEAVES

For my beloved Mom,

who brought me into this world,

and departed from it,

in October.

THE MONTH FOR PAINTED LEAVES. Copyright ©2023 by John-Manuel Andriote. All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address John-Manuel Andriote, 3078 Clairmont Rd. NE, Unit 631, Brookhaven, Georgia 30329.

FIRST E-BOOK EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Andriote, John-Manuel.

The month for painted leaves | by John-Manuel Andriote

The month for painted leaves: nine steps for living an October life | by John-Manuel Andriote

ISBN 979-8-89121-670-9

Psychology

Self-improvement

Aging

Wisdom

Resilience

All photographs, including cover image, by John-Manuel Andriote.



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INTRODUCTION

1 | Stay connected with nature

2 | Be aware of beauty

3 | Understand that life is fragile and short

4 | Show your true colors

5 | Reap the harvest

6 | Store up wisdom

7 | Pass along what you know

8 | Dress in layers

9 | Protect your roots

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

Autumn has always been my favorite season. The fact that October is my birth month isn’t the only reason I love it.

Growing up in southeastern Connecticut—my corner of New England—fall meant bright warm days and chilly nights, new back-to-school clothes, colorful foliage, country fairs, trick-or-treating, and of course, the biggest harvest festival of all, Thanksgiving.

In October 2022, my second autumn living in the South, I found myself longing for my Connecticut homeland—the fields, forests, hiking trails, and seashores that sustained me during the hardest years of my life, when I very unexpectedly returned there after many years of living away—in Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, and New York. I call it the ground that grounds me.

I made the long 16-hour drive northeast from Atlanta during the last week of October 2022, simply to feel the intoxication of so much beauty all at once in the crisp air and peak autumn foliage of the place where I grew up. At the end of my week there, I cried again when I drove away.

As I have gotten older and come to understand the seasons of life—and recognize the autumnal hues beginning to color my own life as I turn 65 this October—I’ve thought a lot about what I have come to call an October life.

Consider October. In his final essay, October, or Autumnal Tints, New England poet, essayist, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau called October the month for painted leaves. It’s the time of year when you might say the leaves show the stuff they are made of, the authenticity that their chlorophyl-fueled summer green has masked.

As nights lengthen in the autumn, chlorophyll production slows and then stops as the tree preserves its energy for the coming winter. The carotenoids and anthocyanin present in the leaves—but kept hidden all summer by the chlorophyll—are unmasked, and now the leaves show their true colors. I think that the change to some higher color in a leaf, Thoreau writes, is an evidence that it has arrived at a late and perfect maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits.

So it is with people. Aging brings many changes to our bodies, relationships, work, and our sense of our place in the world. The autumn of life also has a way of revealing our true selves, unmasked, in all our strengths, frailties, potential used and unused, and dreams fulfilled, denied, or redefined. One thing is as certain in the autumn of life as it is in the spring, summer, and winter: You alone get to decide who you will be and how you will live. As for getting older, I am fond of saying that aging is a fact of life, but old is a choice.

Walt Whitman described old age as life’s halcyon days:

As the days take on a mellower light,

and the apple at last

hangs really finish'd and indolent-ripe on the tree,

Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!

The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

Long before you reach your halcyon days, your full ripeness, you have choices to make about how you wish to live. For example, will you choose to hold onto your life’s disappointments, grudges, hurts, and heartaches that keep you from living your best life? Some may be decades old. Will you focus on, and talk primarily about, your new aches and pains? Will you miss the sweet moments of your present because you are stuck ruminating for the past?

Or will you choose to embrace the changes in your life—its seasons—as opportunities to grow, part of your own maturation and ripening? Will you glean the lessons and harvest the wisdom that an examined and deliberate life—an October life—offers you?

Nature, and deliberately spending time in nature—my favorite way is hiking—can remind you that you are, all of our lives are, part of a much vaster enterprise: the cosmos itself. Amidst that vastness we are like tiny sparrows, so fragile and vulnerable even as we are able to wing our way across thousands of literal, and emotional, miles.

The surest way not to miss even a drop of life’s sweetness is to keep before your mind’s eye the awareness that at some point your earthly journey will end.

It’s also worth reminding yourself that this season we call autumn was once commonly called harvest. We in the United States typically call it fall, referring to the falling of the leaves from deciduous trees. Harvest is a fitting metaphor for the post-youth, middle-age, and elder stages of our lives. It is a time of gathering in, taking stock, sorting out what can be preserved to get us through the coming winter.

In life’s autumn we hope that how we planted our garden, the seeds we have sown and the crops we have tended, will bear fruit that can sustain us for the rest of our lives.  We want to look back on our lives with pride and satisfaction at what we have built, done, raised, started, and completed.

Getting to that point is what living an October life is all about. It means living deliberately and mindfully, choosing to make the most of your time because you are keenly aware that time is limited, fleeting, and precious precisely for those reasons.

I have organized the 27 essays included in The Month for Painted Leaves into nine thematic sections—the steps as I see them for living an October life. I selected them from pieces I’ve written over the years for my Psychology Today Stonewall Strong blog and for the weekly column I used to write for my hometown newspaper, The Norwich Bulletin, in Norwich, Connecticut. Each one offers reflections and guidance for living as consciously, deliberately, and effectively as you can in the time you are given.

I decided to pull these pieces together in one collection because this year, 2023, I am marking the 40th anniversary of my first articles published in national magazines—the beginning of my writing career. I chose these particular pieces because they contain many of the lessons my life has taught me and that I have learned