Fall

Even though fall wasn't really here earlier this week, I could feel that it was coming. The air was cooler. My lips started to chap and my hands to crack. Apples appeared in tote bags at Whole Foods all of a sudden.

Fall really came in my imagination. Suddenly, my mind drifted not to summers in New York City but to autumns in Maine. I thought of American Girl catalogues showing pictures of girls and dolls huddled up together near a fireplace. I thought of L.L. Bean catalogues advertising turtlenecks and v-neck sweaters and the times when it was so cold outside that all I wanted to do was drink a warm beverage and look at a catalogue. I thought of the Sears "Wish Book" catalogue I used to peruse, circling everything I wanted so that Santa would know.

I thought of my own barn jacket and how I've worn it every fall since I was truly young. I thought of the picture of me and a childhood friend sitting on top of a pile of leaves we'd raked, eating apples off our apple tree in our twin barn jackets. I think I still look the same. I still have long hair, anyway.

I only imagine my warm, fall clothes because in reality, they are still in a box at the top of my closet, and I have to face the transitional mess of changing my closet over before I can wear them.

Middle-aged people have started wearing their fall rain jackets. Younger people have not faced up to fall yet. I don't know how many people my age are organized enough - or lonely enough or whatever motivates a person to do such a chore - to change over their closet, cardboard box and all. Perhaps there are some, and they haven't changed their closets over for winter, and that's why they aren't wearing winter clothes yet.

Of course fall means back to school. But it doesn't bring back school memories. It brings back memories of what I wore to school. Memories of the weather getting colder and needing my striped J. Crew sweater from the outlet in Freeport. It brings back memories of school shopping in those wonderful years when one grew so much that one needed an annual wardrobe change.

Fall is the time when I start thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas. I've made my resolution in advance not to get carried away eating sweets even though it's cold and they are comforting. As I write this stream-of-consciousness memory, I think of Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas In Wales" and wish that I could capture my memory of Fall that same way.

At this time last year, I started a quilting project for the winter. Maybe I should start another one this September.

This is the time of year when my mom shifts from gardening to baking and sewing. My dad's activities stay about the same but he starts wearing warmer clothes outside and no longer has to mow the lawn. The problem shifts to lack of grass (ie., hay for his cattle).

When I see new babies at the grocery, I think how interesting it must be to experience fall and not know, yet, that it's something that happens every year.

Baby birds may not feel the same way. Maybe they instinctively know to migrate south for the winter. Or maybe its just a cultural tradition for birds, passed down through the generations. Imagine that. Maybe in a few years, birds will have heated nests, winter coats, farms for raising worms and bugs, places to store gathered seeds, and they will stop migrating for the winter. Maybe they'll start importing their food from the South when it gets cold. Courier pigeons will have jobs again.

Fall is so much more interesting in the imagination.