September is a time of change - the city streets fill with orange and white Uhaul trucks, bringing people away from homes they know into new prospects and possibilities. Girls in ripped jean shorts sport messy pony tails as they wipe sweat from their brows, tanned from the summer sun. Boys in cargo pants and ratty t-shirts lift and push and pull furniture too large and too heavy for the last breaths of hot summer air. Students strut around in new school uniforms, from skinny jeans and hipster glasses to pleated, well-ironed and unseasonal wool. The air is thick with goodbyes followed by hellos, reunions, departures, direction. Everyone headed somewhere, beginning the transitions of fall in preparation for the harsh, cold and settled nature of winter.
For now, my direction is West, following the seemingly never-ending sunsets as I drive to my new home. I'm bracing myself for temperate weather, for forming, out of the rambling of my summer, a daily routine, for languid weekend afternoons in the park, for the satisfaction brought only by exhaustion at the end of a long and successful day in the office. And I couldn't be more excited.
Yet I already miss the falls I've known in New England. I miss the earthy smells that come from the fallen leaves, the colors that litter the landscape, draped over beautiful, stylish women, emanating from the late afternoon sun, reflecting off the lush full trees as they begin their seasonal changes. I miss the opportunities of fall, like the chance of sun, appreciated like a rare gem amidst the ever-cooling days. I miss the chill in the mornings, the feel of hot coffee on cool lips; the fabrics, chunky, soft and reassuring against the bare, bronzed flesh of summer. I miss apple cider, pumpkin pie, the excited entry into the season of family and settled, stable love. I miss all the people I haven't yet left behind that serve as the pillars of my emotional landscape.
I even miss the way fall makes me uneasy, like the worst is yet to come, and even the possibility that the best is, too. Like so much is already done and behind me, but so much is left to accomplish. I miss the discordance of turning an overly bright, thin-fabricked summer wardrobe to the colors and weight of autumn. I miss the frenetic rush to milk each moment out of the changing seasons. I miss the knowledge, possible only in hindsight, of how all these uncertain falls of my past resolved and of the love, warmth and success they harbored.
But now I go West, uncertain, yet again, of what this season brings and even where this winter will find me. I am, however, full - of prospects, of emotions, of the teary goodbyes and excited hellos that have yet to be said, and, as I take the final look over my erstwhile home, full of the all the possibilities, direction and changes of fall and all it means to me.
View of the Flatirons from Boulder, CO:
