A Jewel of Time

Summer is ending and Autumn is ushered in with the whisper quiet fall of leaves and the colours of Summer turning to the crimson, gold and bronze of Autumn.

This is a Jewel of Time in the year, a genuine moment of glory. Many people welcome Summer with its brassy greens and golds and its bright cherry reds and brazen hues of glory. I too love Summer but it is Autumn which holds my heart. In this season, when all the brass has gone and the bronzed and soft golds come into their own my heart swells with love for the earth and a joy I never feel at any other time of the year spreads through my entire conscious.

Here is the time of harvest, we have the fruits of our labours to pack into bottles, cans, packs, cellars and nets. Bottles wait to hold the wines and the chutneys, jams and pickles we make from our allotment treasure and hedgerow gathers. Does that sound old fashioned ? that I take the time to make jams and chutneys ? or that I actually harvest food I have grown myself to keep me through the year ? it isn't old fashioned though is it, it is the time honoured way of our ancestors and if modern newspapers are to be believed it is coming back into fashion ' being pro active' making our own 'things' foods and the like.

I love walking the little roads of my home town. Harlech is surrounded by wonderful little woodlands and forests as well as country roads. True I never collect soft fruits or apples from roadway hedges, I don't want a dose of Carbon Monoxide with my pie, but I look for other harvests. Filbert Nuts (Hazel to the uninitiated or Cob ) and wild flowers to dry for my Pot Pourii. I look for wonderful leaves that have turned in colour to preserve, I dry them, varnish them and use them as book marks through the year. By varnish I literally mean varnish but find that hair lacquer works just as well. I search the woodlands for walking stick material too and wands and staffs and sometimes I am lucky and find a little twisted Hazel or a piece of Ivy wood that is gnarled with time and aged into a wondrous puzzle of what limb started where and where does it end. I am making a 'tree' of such roots at the moment, one that will eventually become a Fairy Stronghold and a nightlight for a little child. All these little things are the gift of Time. Jewels in a necklace of moments when seeds where planted, or wood grafted or flowers fruiting.

I love collecting the apples for cider or apple pies and the soft fruits of blackberries, haws and rose hips to make wines with. I simply enjoy the involvement in the making and the eating or drinking becomes another bonus another Jewel in my collection of Time.

There are other Jewels to collect too. Photographs of the children who started school this year, or went to 'big school' for the first time, or have just left school and are going to sixth form or college or Uni. All these images become captured moments in time that will never be relived again, never happen again in the persons life...frozen on paper in prints that will stay forever the colour of the day, the moment. A Jewel to reflect a memory or create a link in a history of a life or a family connection. A hundred years from now there will be people look at those photographs and perhaps remember a story, a moment when they themselves began a new day, a new way and link to the ancestors in front of them. Maybe a child will say to Nana 'was that you in the olden days Nana? and out will come the rest of the Jewels to jog memories, bring back that captured moment long enough to create a smile, and another Jewel will be created, this time for that future child's life to enhance and polish and remember with their own grandchild another 100 years on.

I wanted so much to keep so many of the photographs I used to have, sadly they got lost in transit when I moved house once too often. So I am currently tracking down anyone and anywhere that may have photographs of my past, my children's pasts. I pounce on friends albums on Face Book and happily download an image I thought lost in time. I rifle friends photographs when I visit their homes, I go back in time to old newspapers and sometimes the archives of the BBC or ITV looking for images once part of my real time life.All in all I find little golden treasures, little sparkling Jewels of memory and treasure them all the more because I thought them lost.

Each moment in time becomes precious even more so when you feel that you are approaching the end of time in your world. Someone is passing or passes without foreknowledge and those moments with them have gone or will go and you have no more Jewels of time with them. It is then that you realise how precious time is, why I call them Jewels. Those memories, sparked by the turn of Autumn leaves have brought my mind to the precious moments not only of the worlds turn but of my liefs journey.

Quite a few years ago now, I lost my brother. We had shared much in our lives and until he was 21 we shared a happy and very loving relationship. I was 14 years older than he and my sister was 12 years older and he often said he had 3 mothers not one. Sadly we had a fall out and for 13 years we hardly spoke unless it was to be civil. The year before he passed away he wrote to me, an apology and an expression of sentiments which was and is to this day a precious moment in our time as brother and sister. That letter too is a Jewel. One I took much comfort from when he had passed away. For others would have taken the sadness and the hurt I felt, the loss and the pain I held inside me as I supported my little Mum through an horrendous moment of time that has not ceased for her in its cruelty and its emptiness. Those people tried so hard to cause further pain with silly remarks and stupid contentious and eagerly used jealousies and contemptuous supposition, to hurt not only myself but my Mother. Comments and remarks which where wholly unfounded and totally untrue where suddenly being spoken 'as if the truth', 'as if truly witnessed' but I had my Jewel, my letter which spoke of love and concern and truths and my Jewel sustained me and proved the lie. I read that letter until I almost shredded the paper because it was all I had left of my Brothers Truth and mine that was ours and ours alone. My Jewel of a letter helped me through a bitter winter of coldness and even now is one of the centrepieces of my Family Ancestral Records. No matter other peoples 'truths' I have my own proof and it is enough.

Whatever prompted my brothers letter writing, it became a jewel of light in a dark time, a tangible proof and above all an expression of love that sustained. I have kept other jewels of time in my world. Letters from my Mother, sadly I have none of my Fathers beautiful writing and letters and e mails from friends which I carefully print off to keep in my life journal. Words that describe or reveal sentiment or actions which reflect on myself or my family and sometimes on my friends. Each aspect revealing a layer of my own time with them, or for them.

So I have Autumn to remind me of times gifts:-

Autumns colours gently shaded
Brassy Summers colours faded
Greens and Golds have gone to bed
Reds and Bronze leap ahead

That in contemplating the beauty of this time has also prompted me to see time as little pockets of moments that can be recaptured, kept safe from harms way is only a bonus of the thought. Between Autumn and its lessons and the end of my thought trail of letters and poetry that evinces a special moment and all the images in between, I have a fine necklace made up of nothing but The jewels of Time.

It is priceless.