An Ode To Fall

They say we’re going to wake up to some cold tomorrow and I could not be happier. Mostly because I am absolutely sick and tired of cutting grass. From the second I fire up the mower for the first time each spring I daydream of the morning I will wake up to frost on the ground. I realize there are those that enjoy yard work, and those people are masochists.

Summer transforms me into the Greek figure Sisyphus who was forced to push a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down as he reached the top; summer is my hill and the ever growing grass is my boulder, taunting me with each drop of rain that falls from the scorching hot sky. 

As November comes to our doors, however, I feel I have finally reached the top of the hill and my boulder sits safely on flat land. At least until tornado season rolls back around and blows it back down into the valley. 

It’s not just the lack of mowing that I love about fall though. The reasons are manifold. To begin with, November starts off with my children going door to door collecting candy that I will readily steal from them as they slumber. There’s also college football, which every good southerner is required to love. There’s marching band music, bonfires, and ghost stories. There’s the memories of a neighborhood filled with kids that felt like they had the world at their feet.

I think that’s what I love most about fall, the memories. The family gatherings and neighborhood football games. The chilly days spent in the woods alongside the Cumberland River, our comfort level boosted by the knowledge that most snakes were hibernating, or at least too slow to strike and bring about our doom. 

The leaves blowing across the ground is the soundtrack of another time; the smell of smoke on a flannel shirt is the aroma of a precious time. It wasn’t perfect, or even as good as I remember it, but it was our time and we loved it.