Isn't He Handsome + New Beginnings

I really love beginnings. 

I love beginnings almost as much as I honest-to-goodness hate goodbyes. I suppose I love beginnings because of my deep-rooted dislike of endings,  beginnings composing the antithesis of goodbyes. Goodbyes find me choking back tears, weepy and sorrowful (no matter how short-lived: maybe I'm just dramatic). Thus it makes perfect sense that the arch enemy of the ending - the beginning - installs a happiness deep in my bones.

Autumn and beginnings are a pair deeply intertwined in my thoughts, new starts running like seams through the fabric of that golden season. Autumn has always been a time for fresh starts: terms commencing anew and the accompanying crisp white notebooks, fresh uniforms, promise of blank slates, unknown faces and new shoes. 

Good things happen all year round, but my thoughts always trick me into believing good things happen mostly in the autumn. There is little innate truth in such a statement, but of course, I can think of all sorts of great things which happened and happen in the fall to support my persuasive mind. I moved to Bristol one autumn. Two years later, in the autumn, I moved to Regensburg. I fell in love in the autumn. And autumn in my head is everything I adore - all cups of steaming coffee, knitted scarves, curling up with a novel beside a fireplace, walks through the amber leaves and nourishing homemade soups on the table. Perhaps because the season is so fleeting, my memories of it are imbued with a hazy glow, unrivalled by summer, winter, spring. 

But my funny old mind's theory has been proven again this year because, already, especially great things are happening. My sister is pursuing her dreams and I have a new job at a new library. 

Most excitingly, my love (isn't he handsome? doesn't that smile make your heart just expire?) is getting his very own, grown-up new beginning this autumn. Walking through the grounds of Bamburgh Castle this week, far away from home, he picked up the phone and was offered a (dreamy) job as a translator in a sweet little pocket of London, doing almost exactly what he wants to do for a living. His smile says it all, doesn't it? 

Autumn, you're doing it again. 

So here's to new beginnings. And smiles that make the heart melt (see above).