The Season For My Reasons

Wow! It's already Tuesday night? It seems like a Sunday afternoon to me.

The Autumnal Equinox has come and gone, and I did not even try to stand an egg on end. Go figure! Autumn is my favorite time of year. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because I am a creature of the dark, as my #1 son calls me. And I know the days are growing shorter.

I've always enjoyed this season. From the time I was but a child covered in a bedsheet, crunching up and down the leaf-strewn sidewalks begging for candy while my daddy stood behind assorted trees, to the adult years of sighing with satisfaction upon leaving work on a December day at 5:00, the street lights signaling that it was time to cozy up to the family, away from the elements. From high school Friday nights, coiled with my band brethren around the goalpost, ready to unwrap and surge onto the football field, bright white gloves with the fingertips cut off protecting my hands from the frosty chill, to the sunny, endless unemployed afternoons of driving home from my mom's house down our yellow-leaf-covered then-gravel county road to my new Mansion, The Pony still a 4-months-away eagerly-anticipated gift awaiting the grand unveiling. From the Saturday 10k runs of college, with their lure of FREE bottles of Perrier and commemorative T-shirts, to the glassy calm sun-warmed surface of my favorite fishing hole at 2:00 on an October afternoon, on my day off as a convenience store cashier. From the lazy days I lounged in my English classes, refusing to listen to lessons about sentence fragments and prepositions, to the present days of writing my own blog and not giving a rat's behind what people think of my sentence structure. I love Autumn.

A cloudless, blue-skied Autumn day could almost convince me, despite the high-functioning autistic kindergartener whom I towed by the forearm while he skiied down the sidewalk on the heels of his cowboy boots, screaming, "I HATE YOU!" while trying to thwart my attempt to catch up to my line of tiny physical education students I had sent into the building after a rousing game of Duck Duck Goose, that in spite of my annual salary of $8500, I had the best job in the world.

I love that nip in the air, the frost that forms on a dead possum in the driveway overnight, the frisky gallumping of the dogs around the porch in the mornings, chili suppers and book fairs, the beginning of basketball practice, the Christmas catalogs, the Fall Festivals, the hayrides, the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

I love Autumn. Kramer bottled the smell of The Beach for a cologne. I want to bottle the smell of crunchy leaves in the sun.