For fall, even though you're not here yet

This summer was my first not-real-summer. I didn't get to lay out in the sun or dip my toes in the pool without having to worry if one of the kids I was watching was going to go face first in and shriek out in terror. I didn't get tan. (Preemptively, I purchased face powder a shade darker than normal. Turns out, I've just been a shade darker in the face for about a month. Attractive, I know.) I didn't see anything wonderful except brake lights and Colorado Blvd by morning and evening commute.

That's an exaggeration, but for someone who loves summer afternoons of freedom, the idea of sitting on the sixth floor of an office building has been one of grief. Youth is gone, mostly.

I've been smelling fall in the air.
Autumn is coming, it's right around the corner.

The mornings bite crisply even as the days reach nearly ninety degrees. The nights are scented with nature, sort of unnatural in the middle of the city.

To me, autumn means driving through crunchy leaves and dark afternoons. It means fresh notebooks (it must be left over from my school days). It means tights and my favorite tweed skirt. It means pumpkins and squash and witch decorations.

My freshman year of high school, I rode to school with a girl who lived down the street. For all of October, she had a CD of horror film soundtrack songs. And so every time I hear one of those songs, I'm thrust back into the fall of 2002, the red cloth in the Ford sedan, the CD player (she took the face of it with her every time we parked, just in case her car got broken into), that CD, and the leaves. Always the leaves - the music added such an eerie aura to them.

I love fall. I love the cool mornings and the warmth of the days. I hate how the sun slips away faster and faster until it's gone and the winter has set in.

But the promise of fall is a glorious one.

And Halloween is right around the corner. Yay!