I’ve always loved the fall

I’ve always loved the fall.

No matter how hot any particular day might get, in the fall there is an undercurrent of coolness in the air.

My birthday is in the fall, and this year is one of those major decade birthdays where—like the odometer in my car, the number on the far left flips, irretrievably, to the next.

In my head I know it’s just a number, and just another day. We all know the clichés: “you’re only as old as you feel,” or “age is just a number.”

Yes, I know all these, but some numbers, again like mileage on your car, loom larger and are more ominous than others.

There was a lot more I thought I’d get done by this point in my life.

And this is where the change of seasons comes in; the coming of fall is the unavoidable reminder that it is time to make sure everything is patched, painted, fixed and put away. It is the season to make sure everything is taken care of.

Even if we work during the summer, as I usually do, there’s some kind of getting back to seriousness about the fall.

It’s time to gather up and put away, get ready for school and prepare for winter.

And it’s time to celebrate and play with the visceral knowledge that time is quickly sliding away.

What was most important—or most possible—just a few weeks ago, won’t matter or be possible a few weeks from now.

Everything changes. Always.

In the fall, more than any other season, there is change, but not finality.

But somehow in the summer (and winter) we come to believe that we have arrived, that this is how life is—and how it should stay.

But it never is, and it never will be.

And perhaps that is why I love the fall.

It reminds us that there is no escape from this precarious cusp we all inhabit; every day is an irreplaceable gift, and there are no guarantees except that these gifts are not infinite and that even the coldest winter is not forever.

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