Summary

Chapter One of “October” is titled “Making Ready.” May shifts back and forth between present- and past- tense narration as she describes her experiences of having the deepening realizing that a new experience of “wintering” is coming. That experience, as she describes it, is accompanied and/or defined by a medical leave from her job. She describes realizing just how overloaded with work she has made her life, and just how much she has allowed her focus on her home life to shift to other, non-home activities. She essentially describes herself as “wanting to make everything ready” (24) even as she knows that this “wintering” is going to become “darker, leaner, [and] lonelier” (24). As part of this realization, she adds, she has re-discovered the joys of cooking and baking.

May then considers her experiences of preserving food, commenting on how the habit of...