Nothing Gold Can Stay...

'I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.'

-Anne of Green Gables

Last Thursday, I decided on a whim to go and get my hair colored.  I tend to be pretty conservative with my hair, but was feeling a tad bit impulsive and decided to run with it.  I told my hair stylist I wanted to go dark, back to my roots, and that my hair was in desperate need of some 'life.'  A color, a trim, and a bottle of sea salt texturizing spray later, and I felt like a new woman.  It's amazing what an hour at the salon will do for a girl.

As I was watching Ashley apply gobs of dark color to my sun-bleached locks, I laughed when I thought of one of my favorite young adult books of all-time --- S.E. Hinton's, The Outsiders.  And while my fondest memories of this story may involve a movie version and a young Matt Dillon on a hospital bed in his underwear, I developed a deeper love of Hinton's narrative, her ability to bring these young boys and their issues to life in a way that called me to empathize as a reader, and the beauty in the way she streamed her own love of literature into the words of Ponyboy, Dally, and Johnny.  

Early on in the book, Ponyboy is watching a sunset and is reminded of the Robert Frost poem, 'Nothing Gold Can Stay.'  The poem reads:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.  

This poem becomes a metaphor for the entire book; a deep look into issues of life, loss, and breaking the walls of traditional barriers that sort and separate people from a common understanding.  I love this poem simply because it reminds me of beauty, and the loss of, and that the beautiful things in this world are often beautiful simply because they don't stick around.  

We grow tired of things that outstay their welcome.  The winter months grow long, laundry never ends, and sun-bleached hair just doesn't look as good when that summer tan fades away.  So many of the good things in this world are good because they leave us too soon.   

I think this is why I love October.  And babies.  And Christmas.  They exist for such a short, fleeting period of time, and we do all we can to enjoy, and savor, and take advantage of them while they're here.  It's not always easy, especially when fall turns gray, and Christmas gets expensive, and babies teethe, and poop, and cry when we're really really tired, but these moments seem to be far overshadowed by the golden hues of these seasons...

...an absolutely gorgeous October afternoon, crisp air, golden hues, and a new wool scarf wrapped just so around your neck...

...a movie under the Christmas tree, a log on the fire, and a verse of Silent Night by candlelight...

...and those sweet babies, their first smiles, and those peaceful moments of rocking them to sleep and wishing they would stay that small forever...

This weekend, we enjoyed our last weekend of October.  We carved pumpkins and roasted the seeds, made caramel apples, and drank hot cocoa.  We danced during bath time, let Cruz bang on pots and pans while Beau strummed his guitar, and practiced our trick-or-treats with a parade at Grandpa Ray and Grandma Mary's.  It was an October weekend, exactly as it should be.  

 

 

 

So whether it's my hair color, or this favorite month of mine, or this two year old boy who seems to grow bigger every single day, nothing gold can stay...

...but I'm afraid that if it could, it wouldn't be as sweet.