Former Summer Lover Embracing Fall

I didn’t even know it had happened until it was already over. You know that feeling you get when you realize you have thought something inappropriate or wrong and you’re not sure what it was but you know it’s out of place? That feeling bubbled up into my lungs while watching TV and it had passed before I could even identify it. The scene was a girl entering a state park restroom on a chilly autumn night. It was her outfit that made me feel it: skinny jeans, boots, fitted sweater, denim jacket. The feeling? A lust for fall.

I thought of my favorite gray boots and new denim jacket bequeathed to me at the end of last spring, too late in the season to really get any wear out of it. I remembered the softest sweater I owned and how wearing it to work felt like cheating because it wasn’t uncomfortable and stuffy like most office-wear. I took a deep breath, willing crisp air to enter my lungs. I felt like a fraud, that I was betraying my summer birth and love of endless beach days.

Living in Texas I never truly understood the love of fall or the season itself. Moving to the East Coast I assumed that would never change. I assumed I would never change. Even through apple picking trips and pumpkin carving contests, I unconsciously vowed never to embrace the leaves turning or the boots coming out.

I suppose in little ways 9 years in the northeast had chipped away at my resolve. It happened slowly at first, buying more scarves, embracing a apple cider doughuts, but I still maintained I was a summer baby and sunshine lover. Even when I realized (sadly) that hardly any housing on Long Island had central air, I still maintained my affinity for hot, bright days.

But now I long for fall.

What took me so long to embrace something that was clearly inching its way into my heart for almost a decade? I didn’t want to give up my identity, I think. I felt that saying I loved the September-November season would be an affront to my home state that could never really muster the weather to claim it had an autumn. Or that I would be just like “everyone else” who embraced the crisp mornings and short afternoons. And God-forbid I be like anyone else.

But I’m out now, and I’m proud.