I’m holding my heart out but clutching it, too

Last night I was privy to a conversation lamenting the early sunsets of fall. It was nearing 7 p.m. and dusk was settling in outside the coffee shop we occupied. The others with me missed the daylight stretching well into the evening, the late nights summer inevitably brings.

But oh, not me. The other seasons exist so I can recall how much I appreciate autumn, or so I would have you think. All year long I crave those first few moments when summer’s heat breaks and suddenly 90 degrees is a hot day. I long for nights spent with the windows open, fading into mornings, afternoons and evenings spent with the windows open. I daydream about taking my morning coffee on my balcony. I wait for football and planning outfits for a 20 degree swing in temperature from tailgate’s beginning to game’s end. I recall those magical moments as a student in Tuscaloosa, when I would step onto the quad and think, this is what campus life should feel like. (Somehow those came in spring in Tallahassee.) I embrace harvest beers and light my harvest candles. I queue up my autumn playlist for weeks in advance of the weather’s change. (Is it surprising that it’s eight times longer than my lists for the other seasons? I don’t think so.) I switch from my daytime coffee to hot apple cider in the evenings. In retrospect, even difficult seasons in life seem sweeter if they occurred during fall.

I am trying to relish in every hint of my favorite season, from September’s overtures to its final, fading notes in December. I don’t want to wish a moment of it away.

And even when the trees have just surrendered to the harvest time
Forfeiting their leaves in mid-September and sending us inside,
Still I notice you when change begins and I am braced for colder winds.
I will offer thanks for what has been and what’s to come.
–Nichole Nordeman, “Every Season”

3 thoughts on “I’m holding my heart out but clutching it, too

  1. i so know what you mean. when i got my degree framed, i picked a picture that reminded me of the feeling. i can look at it and put myself there, knowing how it felt.

    walking down to the stadium on a beautiful fall day was the best. it still is really, but obviously it only happens a couple of times a year at most now and not 6 or 7.

  2. In the marginal days between hot weather and the cool days of fall, I often hope that if I start wearing jackets and sweaters earlier, or start listening to my autumnal playlists, that it will somehow convince Nature to hurry up with its progression. Never really seems to work, though….

  3. August and Everything After.
    Fall is my sweetest time too. I am particularly fond of November.
    I must agree, that the hard times, when happening in Fall, were nothing less than bitter sweet.
    I wish you could sit outside with me and hear the church bells and see the sky fading to a pretty, perky periwinkle blue. The breeze is captivating… ahhh, nothing beats the breeze.

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