Heading for a Fall

Autumn is on the horizon, like it or not. (I don’t.)

I guess according to which calendar you adhere to, summer is over. Labor Day is officially behind us, and my kids are back in school. I’m back in the rhythm of packing snacks and lunches and making sure uniforms and gym clothes are washed, filling water bottles and signing reading logs and checking PowerSchool. 

My kids – fall freaks, both of them – are wearing sweaters and hoodies (even though it’s still in the 90s) and ordering pumpkin spice lattes (iced because, I repeat, it’s still in the 90s) and lighting candles with names like Cinnamon Iced Pumpkin Caramel Apple Pie and drenching themselves in body spray called Autumn Bonfire Moonsmoke or something. 

Meanwhile, I’m sticking to the calendar that says summer doesn’t end until Sept. 21 and the thermometer that says it’s still in the 90s. I’m clinging on to summer with my very fingernails.

I really don’t know why I fight so hard against it, this changing of the seasons. I’m ready to stop running the AC round the clock and having $400 Entergy bills. I’m ready for it to stop raining every single day and turning my front yard into a jungle that I can’t even mow (aka make my husband mow) because it won’t stop raining long enough. I’m ready to make soup and roast butternut squash and spice cake with cinnamon-cream cheese frosting. I’m ready to carve pumpkins and plan Halloween costumes and a Thanksgiving menu. 

Something about the kid in me – compounded by a decade of incredibly cold winters in Missouri, where I could never enjoy fall because it was tinged with the existential dread of impending winter – has made me resistant to embrace summer’s retreat. 

But I can rage against it all I want; it’s still happening. Maturity, I guess, is realizing that all I can control is my own reaction. And while I’m not excited about it, I can try to look on the bright side. 

Hurricane season is going to slow down soon, I have a really cute pair of boots I can debut and I won’t have to worry about how bad my pedicure looks, and I’m going to dress my dog up as the Joker for Halloween. 

But I’m drawing the line at pumpkin spice lattes, even over ice. 

 

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