Ode to Autumn

            My feet are numb. I am neither at the summit of Mount Everest, nor dangling my legs off the side of a boat dock in the Great Blue Pacific, but I cannot feel my toes. I am, in fact, perched on my couch with a cup of tea and a blanket, wearing a pair of wool socks and my Woolrich boot slippers (possibly the shoe world’s greatest contribution to mankind, just before or after Rainbow sandals). But when I wiggle them, my toes, there is only a vague tingling of remembrance, blood flow a faint, silver memory that has faded into the lost summer, along with fireflies and late sunsets. This is my next eight months, October through May. Cold toes. And it seems as though, each year, at the onset of fall, it’s the only thing I can remember about them.

            I feel guilty saying it, but I hate fall. You remember that episode of Friends where Chandler doesn’t like dogs? And Joey warns him not to admit it to anyone. It’s socially unacceptable to dislike dogs. Dogs and fall.

            I try to be a grateful person. The fact is, as Zac Brown puts it, that “I’ve got everything I need, and nothing that I don’t.” Still, I can’t help but think this time of year that I could do without October. Fall is like the two weeks leading up to the first day of school as a child. You can’t help but be excited about something new. The world feels different and that’s exhilarating. There are some delightful things about it: new school supplies, for one. Writing implements and endless supplies of paper. And the thought that this time you’ll get the organization down just right. And the wondering about the faceless people whose last names appear on your class schedule, and who will soon become a regular part of your Monday through Friday. But the thing with back to school season, as with fall, is that even while it’s coming on, you know that in just a few short weeks, you will be utterly sick of it. You will be knee deep in work and stress and cold, and summer (oh, sweet summer) will be a distant memory and you will kick yourself for the hours you wasted being excited about something that would lose its flavor so quickly, like a hardened gob of Hubba Bubba whose smell is so much better than its flavor ever turns out to be. Such is fall. Sometime long before winter, I realize that I will not feel like a normal, thawed out person until June comes around again, and that is quite a disheartening truth to face.

            Certainly, the changing leaves of fall are a beautiful thing. But are they really so beautiful as waves lapping on sun-soaked sand, or fireflies dancing under the trees at dusk? (Neither of which leave behind a pile of yard produce that pleasant company considers unattractive trash. I live in a neighborhood with a homeowner’s association and I don’t know how my neighbors – or my fiancé – will take to my organic [read hippy, hipster, or whatever else you may blame me for being] philosophy of letting leaves lie – to fertilize the ground and delight the young at heart who need piles to jump in.) I have to admit it that, though I love the genuine sentiment of all the good people who say it, I am increasingly nauseated by the comment that, “we get the four seasons,” as though feeling cold all the way through your bones for six months out of the year is something to look forward to, simply because it reflects a necessary cycle of life. For me, imagining a world with fourteen hours of warm sunlight a day is what really makes the universe seem lovely. I’ll take my diversity in land formations instead of weather patterns. I get, of course, that this is a state of mind that others do not share. I’m a libertarian and I respect everyone’s right to enjoy their diversity as they see fit. Everyone knows God is better than I am at everything, anyway. And maybe it’s just my heightened concern with being found dead under a ten foot pile of Kansas snow this winter that’s making me seem so ridiculously bitter. But here are my cases against fall

1. My toes. (I already told you about those. They are shivering as we speak.)
2. Sweaters. I think sweaters are adorable…on other people. But they always make me feel bunchy. I get headaches from them bunching at the nape of my neck. And turtlenecks make me nauseatingly claustrophobic. I’m 5 foot 3, wearing ten pounds of worsted weight yarn. Don’t tell me I don’t look bulky too.
3. The most comfortable outfit known to womankind – shorts and a tank top – are no longer reasonable daily attire.
4.  My hands get clammy. I know it seems contradictory, but when my feet are cold, my palms sweat. True fact.
5. The entire rest of the school year, I’ll have to layer – and get up an hour earlier, even though everything’s an hour darker. (Thank you daylight savings!)
6. Yosemite – and other high tops – are inaccessible. It’s not like I go to Yosemite on a regular basis, but it makes me feel sad and imprisoned just knowing that I couldn’t if I wanted to.
7. The only thing I yearn for is a seat by the fire and a warm drink – but those things all day for nine months out of the year are not conducive to real life as we know it.
8.  I get antsy to be crafty – which I am terrible at. In the summer, I have no need to be crafty. I am running around outside and planning bonfires and taking in the world. But when cool weather hits, and the only warm activities involve hunkering down at home, I get the urge to make stuff. This inevitably leads to frustration and disappointment because I am neither as creative as my mother, nor as artistic as my sister. And while I can stick with Moby Dick for a dozen hours straight, I have neither the patience nor focus to stick to a Pinterest project long enough to get really good at anything. I should just quit trying. But every year, yarn calls to me from the shelves of the craft store like a creepy Wizard of Oz, echoing down the yellow brick road of the season.*
9.  Getting out of bed in the morning is actually physically painful. And the world no longer smells delightfully grassy.
10. People blow at you all day long with heaters that dry out your skin and stuff up your nose and make you dizzy for fresh air, which you cannot enjoy because the only available fresh air gives you an asthma attack.
11. I can’t realistically daydream about pitching a tent and sleeping under the stars in the middle of a random field at a moment’s notice.
12. And to all you crazy boot people, I’m on your side! But do you know how delightfully good a pair of cowboy boots with some denim shorts really feels?

*What if I made at least one random and unnecessary Wizard of Oz reference in every single blog post for the duration of my life in Kansas? At least I’d one up all the people who told me Wizard of Oz jokes when they found out I was moving to Kansas.

            People say you can’t appreciate the sunshine until you’ve seen the rain, but I do not believe that’s true – at least not at a literal level. I mean, maybe once. Once in your life, maybe, you have to see the winter to know how awesome the summer is. But then, you know! I would, at least. “Winter, fine for some, not for me.” That’s what my memory would tell me as I basked each month in the perfection of 80 degree weather. I wouldn’t need to be reminded annually of how good I had it. Once would be just enough.

            I thought this was an ode to fall, you might be thinking, right about now, if you’ve actually made it all the way through my futile rant against something that has come around for each of the 28 years of my life and all the ones before it and to come. She uses that word, ode, you may be thinking, but I do no’ think it means what she thinks it means. But I do. And I’m getting there. Have gotten there, really. Because here’s what I discovered as I sat down to make my case against fall. I don’t quite hate it. It started with pumpkins. I am definitely on board with the whole pumpkin craze. Pumpkin candles, pumpkin lattes, especially, more than anything else, pumpkin pie! I got a recipe the other day for pumpkin granola bars. And another for crockpot pumpkin butter.

            Of course, if I were really in charge of the universe, apples would dominate the autumn world, even higher on the crop totem pole than the plump, orange pumpkin. If Northern California doesn’t turn you on to apples in the fall, I don’t know what will. Between apple cider doughnuts at Apple Hill and the juiciest Pink Ladies I’ve ever crunched into at the Sacramento Farmer’s Market (Lord, I miss my apple guy!), a love affair has sprung up between the apple and me. Have you ever noticed how hardy apples are? How you can carry them around in a lunchbox or hiking pack for days and they are still crisp and juicy and delicious whenever you get to them? Neither heat nor cold bothers them too much in comparison to the other fruits. Have you ever tasted my mother’s apple butter spread over a slice of toast with cottage cheese? Or eaten apple seeds? (They taste – I learned from my parents’ neighbor who eats the core and all, a practice which I have admittedly taken up – like almonds.) In Kansas, there are varieties of apple that I have never met before. One I am particularly infatuated with has a craggy, rough, yellowish, brownish skin and both the most tart and sweet flavor I have ever known in an apple. I love that it is – like so many of the best things in life – plain on the outside, but surprising and beautiful within.

            I like the tingling the air gets in the fall. Things are changing and the whole universe knows it. The squirrels are about to lose it over the busy venture of moving nuts to and fro. I love them more in the fall than in any other time of year, even when they are uprooting my potted plants and replacing them with walnuts.

            Fall brings out a sadness in me. It always makes me miss terribly all the people that I love. And yet, it also signals the beginnings of the holiday season when I will see many of them again; so there is an excitement in it too. Fall is the nostalgia in me and it makes me cry, but I don’t mind. I appreciate paradox – in life and in emotion. It reminds me that I am real.

            Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Because I get to cook in a crowded kitchen with the people that I love most. And I remember how it feels to be a kid again. And Baba jokes a lot. (If you have never heard English puns spoken delightedly in a Persian accent, you may not have laughed hard enough.) And then we get to eat what has to be the most delicious meal of the year (on account of the stuffing and pickled beets, of course). And I always pick out a Thanksgiving outfit that is all fall-y and cute, and MUCH too warm for my inevitable task of cooking the candied sweet potatoes, and then I get to shed it for something that is much more akin to summer wear and for one, chilly fall day, I am warm. And football. And the Macy’s day parade. And the beginning of Christmas music. And Miracle on 34th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life and White Christmas and Charlie Brown.

            Fall is also the time when the tourists become more sparse in my hometown and the beach becomes a place of secrets and solitude. Oh, how I adore the beach on a brisk, uncrowded day, when the sound of the waves, and the seagulls, and the ferry horn consume all other noise and my soul is alone and free!

            The cycling of the seasons is good for putting one’s small, wonderful life into perspective. And it turns out that, even as I hate it, I love it. Because it’s God’s. And mine. And proof that I’m still alive and part of the grand scheme of things, which is an overwhelming, astounding, and awesome truth, no matter how your toes feel. The squirrels are helping, and so are the pumpkin lattes and apple butter. And the fact that my mom and sister adore autumn as much as I do not. I’m happy for all you crazy, wonderful fall people. Who are bubbling over – on Facebook, and Pinterest, and in coffee shops around the world – with your delighted (albeit sometimes excessive) posts about leg warmers and scarves and cinnamon, vanilla, pumpkin, spiced candles. I’m cold, but I am happy for you. Besides, I’ll know exactly how you feel – come June.

-R.E.A.