Missing autumn

October was a nutty month. For all but five days, JK and I were either hosting out-of-town company, or one or both of us were out of town ourselves. Add to that two weeks of being pathetically, disgustingly sick, a dog with a sprained ankle, a cat that tried her best to run away, a crippling addiction to online presidential news, and a garden in need of putting up for the winter.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I blinked. And I missed fall.

During the past couple of weeks, the situation outside has transitioned decidedly, from cool and crisp with crunchy leaves under foot, to downright cold. Scarf weather. Last weekend I broke out the mittens. A week ago, the forecast called for snow, and Mother Nature delivered. I glanced out the window in the middle of a writing workshop and gasped, surprised by the thick clumps of snow lazily drifting through the tree branches.

This didn't bode well. I need fall. With the cool mornings and the first hint of that fireplace smell and the newness of long sleeves, I've come to associate a kind of birth, a delicate beginning, cemented back in the days when September meant the start of a new school year. Fall means renewal, clean slates, looking forward. The prospect of missing out on this--of moving from the lazy, hot summer to the hibernation of winter without time to dwell in the in-between--left me feeling a bit upside down and out of sorts. Like showing up for class for the first time, just to realize the semester's over.

Until today.

"What's the temperature outside?" JK asked this morning. It's his typical refrain, starting around the end of September and lasting through May. Yesterday was rainy, gray; the week before, cold and dismal.

I logged onto the Weather Channel. Once again, and in the most literal sense, I blinked.

"Seventy-two!" I shouted back, a little too eagerly.

Sunny, breezy, 72 at the peak of mid-day. Outside, the wind blew through the trees, still adorned with bright yellow leaves. "This won't last long," JK cautioned. I didn't care. For one day, in what the calendar suddenly called November (when did that happen??), early fall was upon us.

The dog and I walked around the neighborhood. We took the scenic route. We drove to the store with the windows down. We meandered.

In our daily lives, we all need space to meander. Every now and then, we should afford ourselves a left turn when the map says turn right, just to see where it'll take us. We need to follow our instincts and our hunches, not just our to-do lists. We need time to wonder.

These are the things I've been missing lately. But today gave me sweet reprieve. And as the day fades into evening, shedding minutes by the, well, minute, I have reason not to mourn my evanescent second chance. Because tomorrow's high is 73.

Cold

Just to say. I'm sitting by the window, before sunrise, wrapped in the heaviest wool sweater I own (smartly saved from winter-clothes storage). Outside it smells like fireplace. The dog and cat have started sleeping with their bodies smacked up against us, so as to siphon off our body heat.

Over the next 10 days, we'll be lucky when our high cracks 70. Where my brother lives, several states south of us, the temperature right now, in the early morning, is 81. They'll see 104 degrees before the day is done.

Yesterday it rained on my way to work, and the roads were sloshy with water that hadn't yet seeped into the ground. For the first time in four months, another kind of precipitation came to mind. Driving in snow still terrifies the Texan in me.

I keep telling myself we have a while yet before we'll need to worry about that. Last year, autumn barely managed to slip through the small crack between the end of our hotter-than-usual summer and the Thanksgiving snowstorm that marked the start of our sudden, severe winter. We tried to go apple-picking exactly once (they didn't let you actually pick from the trees, though), but it happened to be tank-top weather that day. Otherwise, my favorite season snuffed itself out without much fanfare.

I can easily let go of the hot summer days. But this year I'm determined to relish this in-between, orange-tree'd, wool-sock weather. This year, we have good cause--sort of an autumn alarm clock, in the form of our vegetable garden. You can't accidentally miss the fall with a dozen pumpkins bulging on the vines, or rows of a last-minute, fall crop of greens anxious to be eaten, or earth to ready for its winter hibernation.