The Grand Finale.

The first thing you should know is that before I sat down to write this post, I poured myself one of the last remaining Sam Summer's from the stock in my fridge.

The second thing you should be aware of is that we've had a banner - an absolute stunner - of a weekend weather-wise here in charming New England.  I'm grateful for it, of course.  In a single weekend I managed to pack in a killer yoga class, necessary errands, some time lounging in the Boston Common, a stroll through Beacon Hill, morning coffee and making a smallish dent in the September issue of Vogue on my porch, as well as enjoying a lovely bike ride around Cambridge.

However, it feels decidedly more like fall than it should for the first full weekend in September; particularly when the calendar tells us we've still technically got a few weeks of summer left.

(Okay.  Before we go any further, let's just get this on the records books.  Once you're an adult and are stuck working year round anyway instead of adhering to the "school's out for summer" sort of schedule, you're allowed very few perks.  However, one of those "gets" is the fact that the Autumnal Equinox falls on September 22nd.  Go ahead, you can check your calendar.  I'll wait. See?  Still summer.  Coincidentally this means that my birthday falls on the very last day of the summer.  Boom!  I just found us close to three whole extra blissful weeks of summertime.)

(Oh.  And one more thing before I continue.  Don't get into an argument with me about how 9/21 is "technically the first day of fall."  Ugh. Insert eye roll here.  It's my birthday.  Do you really have to prove a point?  Are you trying to just rile me up?  Just throw me a freakin' bone, kid. You've had your pumpkin beers since BEFORE Labor Day anyway so what's one more day?)

Anyway.  As I was saying.  It seems we have suddenly arrived at the time of year when a breeze picks up and the humidity drops; when the sky turns that most brilliant shade of blue that it only does during the month of September, and the sunlight...well she suddenly changes on us, exchanging some of her intensity to instead cast an almost surreal, fleeting glow on everything she touches.

It's a beautiful time of year; the season when nature wows us with her last hurrah, her grand, beautiful finale, the time when, as William Cullen Bryan said, we are given "Autumn...the year's last, loveliest smile.”

But here's my dirty little secret, gang:  I don't really like the fall.  Oh, I know.  I KNOW.  There are hundreds of you fainting left and right as you read that very sentence.  You are rolling your eyes at me as you wrap another scarf around your neck, you're eyeing that apple cider, wondering if you should treat yourself to just one more glass.  You're the same people who get excited IN AUGUST about the fact that Starbucks is serving Pumpkin Spiced Lattes again and you're likely also the same people who squirm and jump in glee when a waitress answers your request for a summer ale on draft with an "oooh, sorry.  We just switched the keg to the autumn brew."

(I'm sure you're all lovely people, really.  But we might just have to agree to disagree on this one, okay?)

Ironically, I live in one of the dreamiest locations for a true, classic fall in these whole United States.  I swear, sometimes in September and October I walk around my neighborhood and wonder if I've wandered into a coffee table book so stunning are the picturesque scenes around every corner.  The thing of it is, and this happens every single year,  is that I simply find the fall to be too melancholy, too nostalgic, and far too quite for my tastes.  I might as well come right out and say it.  I find the fall season depressing.  Who doesn't find the beginning of things (spring) so much more inviting and exciting than the end?  When the last colorful leaf has given us her grief and finally fallen from the old oak tree in the park up the street from my house, I am more than aware how many long, cold, dark months we have ahead of us before we see so much as see a bud - or anything green - again.  You know the "Sunday night blues" feeling?  When you're dreading your return to work, or when, as a kid, you finally had to face the homework that seemed so far away on Friday afternoon when class got out?  That's what fall feels like to me. One long season of an anxious, bittersweet, melancholic Sunday evening.

And the weather!  Yes, it's gorgeous.  (I'm not blind.)  And yes, it's cozy.  (I love fall fashion as much as the next girl...we'll get to that in a moment.)  But doesn't the fact that THIS might be the last day you can a) wear shorts or b) not have to  blow dry your hair to keep your head from getting cold or c)don flip flops or d) leave the house without a jacket or e) sleep in your lightest t-shirt and comfiest shortie pj shorts not stress you the hell out?  Because, clearly, it does me.

As I write this (still sipping happily away on that SUMMERTIME ALE I might add) I am taking mental stock of some summer outfits I did not wear at all over the last three months.  And now I have to put them away until 2014?  Are you crazy?  The naysayers will of course, simply point out that I *may* have too many summer dresses, but come on.  Have you met me?  I'm the girl who has never met a sundress she didn't like.

But here's the real deal.  If I take my tongue out of my cheek and give it to you straight, it's this.  The hibernation mode of people that starts during these early fall Sundays and leads straight up until on or about Memorial Day sort of kills me.  Sometimes I think, if I had a better half around I might be able to make a go of this whole let's stay inside and watch endless hours of football phenomenon.  Hell, I could even get into the chili cooking and apple crisp baking and all the rest of it.  But it's harder with one.  And I don't write that as a pity party sort of statement. It just is. 

My Mother, who I should point out is a HUGE fan of fall, has always described the season with a sentence that I like so much I may have to use it in a book one day:  "The quiet that seems to come from no where."  Which is dead on in my opinion.  Even this afternoon, as I biked along the Charles watching the regatta teams on the river in the sunlight, content and just generally basking in my very good fortune to call this city home, I felt it.  It simply gets quiet.

Sometimes I wonder if the reason fall and I have our...differences, if you will, is all because of a certain fall some many years ago, in 1997, when I moved away from my family, my friends, and the only home I'd ever known for the very first time in my adult life.  During my first semester of college I was extremely homesick, and I find even now - some sixteen years after the fact - that once in awhile, when the wind blows just right and I watch the sun in that afternoon September glow, I can still catch a glimpse of that girl I was then, the one who missed her friends, her family, her home in a way she couldn't quite put into words. I may have long outgrown the homesickness that haunted me as a college freshman, but I'd be lying if I told you that now, even at 33, that I don't miss coming home from school one day to find that my Mom had bought pumpkins and mums to set by the front porch.  Or the smell and sound of my Mom making a pot of beef stew in the kitchen while the football game was on in the background.  As stereotypical as it is, I can, clear as day, remember stepping out the front door of the house I grew up in to find my brother and my Dad tossing the ol' pigskin around in the yard, rugby shirts on and all.  And I still miss that.  No matter what unexpected joys await me in this life, I will never get those moments back again.  Blame it on the changing leaves or the brilliant setting suns, but the idea of the past, of the things that have left us never to return always feels so much more prevalent to me during this time of year.   

Every year, for the past sixteen years or so, I find myself walking around with a bit of dread in my stomach because of this ushering in of the new season.  And while I don't exactly anticipate an about face - I'll see your pumpkin flavored anything  and raise it with my fresh blueberries and ripe August tomatoes any day - I am going to do my very best to turn over a new leaf (pun absolutely intended) for the fall of 2013. This year has been a banner year for me, one that's cast such good fortune my way that I often feel I should pinch myself, so why not embrace what's in store for me in the autumn months as well, right?  There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I will grimace the first day I have to get dress and don tall boots instead of flip flops and I know I'll curse a bit under my breath the day that I have to add a pair of opaque tights to my usual ensemble as well. (Seriously, you guys.  Sort of getting hives just thinking about it.)  But heaven knows I love my clothes and I'm a very, very big fan of the layering look.  So this year, I will turn to the chunky sweaters and infinity scarves with the hopes that they can somehow save me; I'll do my best to relish how pin-straight my hair gets when there's no humidity in the air, how cozy it can be to sit on my back porch bundled up in sweatpants, a hoodie, and gloves...losing my summertime tan with every bundled up day that passes.

Ugh.  Oh god.

The shorter days, the necessary gloves and hats, the first night - and then a few days later the first day when you have to shut up every window in your apartment because it's too cold to keep the windows open?  How do you guys actually like and look forward to this stuff?

I'm breaking out in hives again over here.

No, but really.  I will try.  I promise I will try.  At the very least perhaps I can accept the season if not fully embrace it.  (Much like Napoleon may have "accepted" the fact that he should probably steer clear of Russia??) 

But be warned.  Don't you dare suggest I order a pumpkin anything until at least September 22nd.

 “But then fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you."

 Stephen King - Salem's Lot