Pumpkin Pie and Driving

I was dreaming at 3:30 this morning when the alarm went off. Usually I'm half awake when it goes off, and I get out of bed quickly. This morning I was caught in that dream state, tangled between the here and there. I was dreaming I was watching a middle aged couple and their son, like the perspective of the intrusive television eye, and she was kissing the neck of her partner. They had recently fallen in love, and were quite taken with each other. The teen in the room was rather appalled that grey headed people still had sensual, sexual energy. He was objecting to shows of affection when the alarm rudely intruded.

I've been read the Change series by S M Stirling. If you haven't read it, do so. It challenges my perceptions of the world in wild and uncomfortable ways. Yesterday I read a very pagan account of ritual, of the horned god channeled through the hero. I went to bed thinking of the turn of the wheel, the coming of fall, the shift in the world and the smell of the wind. I've also been thinking of my own shifting sexuality/sensuality. Being the partner of a transgendered person, being in recovery from rather serious PTSD, being a grad student and now graduate of a marriage and family program, has challenged in these ways and more.

I've missed my own sexuality as it took the back seat to study, exhaustion, working full time, attending school full time, and an overburdened caseload. I've worked hard to heal from mental/physical/sexual abuse. I disavowed my sexuality, reshaped it, and struggled to take it back. My identity as heterosexual woman transformed to identifying as lesbian. Then it transformed again, as my partner identified as transgendered. Funny, my spell check doesn't even recognize the word "transgendred" and yet it defines so much of who I am.

I digress. So what does that have to do with pumpkin pie and driving? 4:30 in the morning I drove to work, still in a world not quite made of this one. It's 60 something degrees and humid as I drive, window partly down and heat on my toes. I scanned the roadside for deer, but didn't see any this morning. I thought of the dream, of the book, and of my lover who is suffering a sinus thing that has left her coughing and exhausted. I wonder at the pronoun I just used, because while I use the feminine pronoun, I don't think of Cameron as female very often. But I don't think of her as totally male, either. Wish we had a transgendered pronoun. One that leaves space for becoming.

But I digress. As I grabbed my prepared breakfast and lunch from the frig (I have two days a week I eat all three meals away from home, returning only to sleep), I saw the pumpkin pie. On a whim, I cut a piece. The in-laws sent it home with Cameron last week and we forgot it. I've never been a big fan of pumpkin, and especially not pumpkin pie. But I associate it with fall, with harvest, with the Horned God of sacrifice and bounty. I tried to eat it mindfully, as I drove, tasting the pumpkin, the nutmeg, the cinnamon. It was surprisingly good. Perhaps my taste buds have grown and changed again, accepting tastes as pleasant that I used to simply tolerate. Perhaps my taste buds have become another symptom of the transformation of middle  age, the moments before I become a crone, as I wait post-menopausal and changed at the gate of cronehood.

Something was different about my drive to work, and this quiet moment at work when no clients have yet tapped at the door. Something shifted in my metaphysical awareness. I usually mourn the loss of summer, of heat, of green. This year I find myself grudgingly embracing the fall, the cooler weather, the taste of pumpkin and the ambivalent love of things male. I stand here at this moment of becoming, recognizing that another transformation has presented itself, and wondering at the journey that's about to begin. Wonder where this one will go.