September Girl

I find a lot to love in any season. Winter is skirts and my flat heeled riding boots.  It is curling up with books and a blanket and hot tea from Upton's.  Of course spring is planting and shorts and open windows.  Summer is bare skin and my own schedule and tomatoes.  Glorious tomatoes.

But fall is perhaps the best.  It is the start of things for me.  As children we start the adventure of school in the fall and repeat it every year right up through college.  I still do since school is my present work.  But I see more than just school when I think of fall.  It is a season of anticipation.  At this time of year, even now, if I try, I can already smell a difference in the air in the morning and at dusk.  A crispness that was not there just two weeks ago.  This smell is the herald of changing leaves and geese in the sky.  It hints at wood fires around brush piles, at grass crunchy and glistening with frost, at baking bread and pots of stew again after a summer of salads.    It is the promise of holidays to come.

Perhaps for me, I think of fall the best because it has been my own private bringer of good things.  That cusp between seasons was when we had gotten over the shock of knowing we would be parents and had moved into the enjoyment and anticipatory part of us having Isabella.  We dared to start baby shopping and name planning. Years before that, September was also the season of last minute grass planting and wedding dress fittings.  Cake trials.  More dress fittings.  Finding a house and making it our space. And years before that, it was skipping a class for stolen outings, treks up mountains in September mists. Lordy, I get teary just thinking about all those things. 

I do not know what this September will bring.  Icky stuff like homecoming floats and evaluations are looming.  Jack has a lot of travel coming up.  Girl Scouts is gearing up. Another year older.  Our tenth anniversary . . . I am just glad it is almost here, this month of mine.