Monday, October 24, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Why I love Fall
Ma' boys, att Rudd Farm where we went on our first ever pumpkin patch adventure!
photo by Rachel Darst
One Fine Day
I can't believe I didn't notice them myself, but it took my friend Rachel pointing out the crunchy leaves today for me to open my eyes and see them. Cutting through the Science Center parking lot, all around us was the tapestry of brown and red and orange and gold. The colors of my home and the colors of Autumn are one and the same because this is the time of year when I finally sink into my own. With layers of sweaters and jackets and socks and jeans I feel uninhibited and comfortable. I happily leave behind the sticky film of a Southern summer and don the layers of Winter's approach. I do not mind the early nights and nose-reddening winds. Today I wore socks all day, never had to shed them, and when my little boys were snug in their beds for nap time I sat in the sunroom and listened to the wind play its familiar song on my wind chimes right outside, softly clinking pipes whose song is more familiar than a lullaby and more tranquilizing than hot buttered rum.
A good friend once said that a bass player is the one in the band that everyone forgets about, but whom if he were gone would be noticeably missed. I think that is Autumn. If not for the mosaic of colors fluttering about our heads, and the acorns that catapult down like a parachuting SWAT team this, my favorite season, would be missed. Autumn would be lost amid the hot, sensual sauciness of Summer and the blissfully bitter cold of Winter, Christmas. If not for my friend pointing it out I might have kept waiting for it to hit me over the head (which it later did in the form of an acorn careening straight out of a forty foot tall oak tree and straight onto the top of my head; I'm just glad it didn't hit the kids).
One grievance I have against North Carolina is that I have to wait so long for this beloved time of year, whereas in Maryland the Fall couldn't wait to come park itself right alongside the shiny backpacks, newly sharp pencils, and brand new Keds. In North Carolina Summer is so reluctant to release its humid tentacles that by the time the leaves start to fall they are already dead and Winter is already checking its watch, waving its number in the deli line.
Nonetheless, today the leaves did reach up and grab me by my sock-clad toe, acorns fell and I didn't miss it. I spent two perfect hours with good friends seeing all the animals, from oversized turtles who look like army tanks to the sleek tigers in whose eyes I gaze and feel unbelievably second-rate. After a sweet time together I went to the allergist for my weekly shot and crossed over a tiny river of red leaves, so shiny I'm surprised Jonathan didn't mistake them for candy. I had to look up and make sure they were actually coming from trees because they were so beautiful it seemed like a trick, as if maybe someone who longs for Fall like I do got down on hands and knees and painted them that way.
After dinner we took a walk and had to bundle the baby in a coat and blanket, and the neighbors wore down vests or zip-up jackets. And then, when I headed to meet up with friends over coffee and talk about books, I enjoyed driving down a dark road at seven-thirty pm, in a car so empty of anything but me that my thoughts could roll out of my head like a roll of wrapping ribbon, spinning out in shiny curls of red. I ordered a pumpkin spice latte and watched my two friends talk animatedly about books in their cozy sweatshirts, and then we had to rush to the car to get out of the cold when we said our goodbyes. The flavor of pumpkin and the bite of the cold followed me to my car and I'm just so glad I had my girl friends today to get me out of the house and into the leaves, under the acorns, and into the coffee shop; I came startlingly close to missing the coming of Fall.
A good friend once said that a bass player is the one in the band that everyone forgets about, but whom if he were gone would be noticeably missed. I think that is Autumn. If not for the mosaic of colors fluttering about our heads, and the acorns that catapult down like a parachuting SWAT team this, my favorite season, would be missed. Autumn would be lost amid the hot, sensual sauciness of Summer and the blissfully bitter cold of Winter, Christmas. If not for my friend pointing it out I might have kept waiting for it to hit me over the head (which it later did in the form of an acorn careening straight out of a forty foot tall oak tree and straight onto the top of my head; I'm just glad it didn't hit the kids).
One grievance I have against North Carolina is that I have to wait so long for this beloved time of year, whereas in Maryland the Fall couldn't wait to come park itself right alongside the shiny backpacks, newly sharp pencils, and brand new Keds. In North Carolina Summer is so reluctant to release its humid tentacles that by the time the leaves start to fall they are already dead and Winter is already checking its watch, waving its number in the deli line.
Nonetheless, today the leaves did reach up and grab me by my sock-clad toe, acorns fell and I didn't miss it. I spent two perfect hours with good friends seeing all the animals, from oversized turtles who look like army tanks to the sleek tigers in whose eyes I gaze and feel unbelievably second-rate. After a sweet time together I went to the allergist for my weekly shot and crossed over a tiny river of red leaves, so shiny I'm surprised Jonathan didn't mistake them for candy. I had to look up and make sure they were actually coming from trees because they were so beautiful it seemed like a trick, as if maybe someone who longs for Fall like I do got down on hands and knees and painted them that way.
After dinner we took a walk and had to bundle the baby in a coat and blanket, and the neighbors wore down vests or zip-up jackets. And then, when I headed to meet up with friends over coffee and talk about books, I enjoyed driving down a dark road at seven-thirty pm, in a car so empty of anything but me that my thoughts could roll out of my head like a roll of wrapping ribbon, spinning out in shiny curls of red. I ordered a pumpkin spice latte and watched my two friends talk animatedly about books in their cozy sweatshirts, and then we had to rush to the car to get out of the cold when we said our goodbyes. The flavor of pumpkin and the bite of the cold followed me to my car and I'm just so glad I had my girl friends today to get me out of the house and into the leaves, under the acorns, and into the coffee shop; I came startlingly close to missing the coming of Fall.
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