This is Fruitycake. You are reading the basic version of today’s blog, but trust me, the full version has more melons, more feelings and considerably more DRAMA. 😂
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The Melons Know Something We Don’t
This is Fruitycake. Apparently summer has decided it is not leaving this Portofino place quietly, and frankly, I respect that. If you are going to leave, you might as well make an exit worth remembering. Throw some flowers everywhere. Grow a few melons nobody planted. Send in a giant rainstorm. Make the persons wonder what season it actually is. THAT is how you make an exit.
All around the rustico right now, flowers are blooming as if they have received absolutely no notification that summer is almost over. Little bursts of color are appearing in places that looked tired and dry only a few weeks ago, and they seem to be making one last effort to hold on, stretching toward the sun and saying, “We are not finished yet.” Girl Person understands them, because I think we are doing a little bit of the same thing. We know our season at this rustico is coming to an end. We made that decision, even though making a decision and being emotionally prepared for it are two entirely different things. We are ready for what comes next. We are ready to get back to that America place and begin the next chapter of our rescue work. But while we wait, we are also trying to hold on to these days here, because knowing it is time to leave does not mean you stop loving where you are.
And right now, waiting is especially difficult because someone has actually made us a verbal offer on the rustico. Those are very exciting words, but words are not papers, and words are not a deposit, so we are waiting to see if they follow through. Patience is not exactly one of Girl Person’s greatest talents. She would prefer to know what is happening approximately five minutes ago. Boy Person tries to be sensible about it, and I personally think anyone making a verbal offer on a property should be required to follow up immediately with paperwork, a deposit and a pizza so that nobody has to endure unnecessary suspense. But maybe this waiting is part of the changing season too. We know something is changing. We can feel it. We just do not know exactly when the old season ends and the new one begins.
And then there are the Christmas melons. Nobody planted them this year. They simply appeared and started growing all by themselves, right here at the end of our season at the rustico. And maybe that is the part that gets Girl Person the most. We do not know who those melons are growing for. Maybe they are growing for us, and we will still be here when they are ready. Or maybe they are growing for someone else—the next persons who will walk these terraces, look after this land and discover all of the surprises it has tucked away. Maybe those melons are not asking us to know.
There is something strangely beautiful about that. We spend so much of our lives believing that if something grows in a place we loved, we have to be the ones who get to harvest it. But maybe that is not always how seasons work. Sometimes you plant something and get to enjoy it yourself. Sometimes you harvest what someone before you planted. And sometimes you leave something growing for a person you may never even meet. We have poured so much of ourselves into this rustico, and perhaps part of leaving is accepting that not everything that blooms here next belongs to us. That does not make our season here less important. Maybe it means our season mattered enough for something to keep growing after it.
Today, the weather is about to give us a rather dramatic reminder that seasons do, in fact, change. Very bad rain is coming, and around a mountain rustico, rain is never simply rain. It is an EVENT. There are paths to think about, water to watch, things to secure and approximately 4,782 reasons for Girl Person to stare suspiciously at the sky and say, “I don’t like the look of that.” The flowers are still blooming, the melons are still growing, but the sky is changing. Summer can try to hang on all it wants, but another season is coming.
Which brings me rather conveniently to September 17 and today’s affirmation: Being Dramatic Is Not A Fault. It Is Fun. Finally, an affirmation for which I require absolutely no personal growth whatsoever. I have been preparing for this one my entire life. Say it out loud with me: “Being dramatic is not a fault; sometimes it is fun. I am allowed to be expressive, enthusiastic and delightfully extra. I will celebrate ordinary moments with my whole heart. Joy does not need to make itself smaller.”
Maybe being dramatic is simply noticing things loudly. Maybe it is seeing one little flower blooming at the end of summer and deciding it matters. Maybe it is discovering a Christmas melon growing where nobody planted one and treating it like a botanical miracle instead of saying, “Oh, look. A melon.” Maybe it is checking your phone fourteen times to see if a verbal offer has magically turned into something official since the last time you checked four minutes ago. Maybe it is standing at this rustico before a September storm and feeling everything at once—the gratitude, the exhaustion, the impatience, the worry, the hope and the sadness of knowing that someday very soon we may look at this view for the last time as its persons. Why should we make any of that smaller?
There is a season for arriving, and there is a season for leaving. There is a season for planting things intentionally, and apparently there is also a season for Christmas melons to take matters into their own hands. There are sunny days when this mountain feels like it belongs to us forever, and there are stormy days that remind us why it cannot. So we are holding on, but we are also trying to let go. We will enjoy every flower that insists on blooming, cheer for every ridiculous melon, watch the sky change and prepare for the rain. We will keep the faith that the verbal offer may become the real thing, while reminding ourselves that staring at the phone will not make it happen any faster. Believe me, Girl Person has tested this theory extensively.
And I keep looking at those Christmas melons and wondering who they are growing for. Us? The next persons? Maybe we will get to pick them. Maybe someday soon somebody else will walk outside and find them and have absolutely no idea that a dog once wrote an entire blog about them. I do not know. But perhaps faith is letting them grow anyway. Faith is believing that you do not have to know who gets the melon, when the papers will be signed or exactly what the next season will look like to trust that something good can still be growing.
When the time finally comes to leave, do you really think we are going quietly? Please. There will be tears. There will be speeches. Girl Person will take approximately nine million pictures. Boy Person will say we need to get moving. There will probably be dramatic music that only I can hear, and I will most likely sniff something completely inappropriate during the emotional climax. Because being dramatic is not a fault. Sometimes it simply means you loved something enough to make leaving it a very big deal, and we have loved this place with our whole hearts.
But seasons change whether we are ready or not. Flowers bloom one last time. Rain comes. Melons appear out of nowhere. Someone says they want your house, and then you somehow have to find the patience to wait and see if those words become reality. Doors close and other doors open. Maybe the hardest part is that little space in between, when you know the season is changing but you are still standing in the old one.
So today we will wait. We will prepare for the rain. We will keep the faith that this rustico will find its next persons very soon and that our next chapter will begin when it is supposed to. And until then, we are going to notice every flower, every changing leaf, every patch of September sunshine and every completely uninvited Christmas melon this place gives us.
Because whether those melons are growing for us or for someone else, they are still growing.
And maybe right now, that is enough.
Dramatically, of course.
Fruitycake
P.S. This is a hard season for our little family. We are waiting and praying for the rustico sale to move forward while trying to cover groceries, necessities and fuel and, at the same time, build our new This Is…Me rescue project. This project is about making sure REAL rescue dogs are seen, believed and rescued in a world where it is becoming harder to know what is real online. We truly need your help to make it through this season and into the next one. Please do not think a small contribution does not matter—it does. Every $5, $10, share and prayer helps keep us going right now. www.tinyurl.com/2tdnecessities
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