Welcome Autumn

Growing up you were considered kind of weird if you answered anything other than Summer for your favorite season.  No school, playing outdoors all day long, swimming, sun....summer was king!  It's hard to kick that habit, but I have to say Autumn is my favorite season now.  Don't get me wrong....I still love summer!  My birthday is in the summer, I love spending the time with my kid when he's on vacation, campfires, travelling....there's so much to do!  But it gets so hot!  How did we not notice this as children?

There is nothing at all nice about a 90 degree day....there's just not!  Ten minutes in the sunshine with anything less than SPF1000000 and you've got third degree burns on half your body.  Heaven forbid you need to use a car....it's like crawling into an oven.  Swimming would be fun....but you just know going to the beach is an exercise in futility as it's going to be full....every person in a 20 miles radius who didn't have to work that day is going to be there.  There might be six square inches of water to stand in....and it's probably going to be warm.  You'll get to watch the 500lb man in his speedo play catch with his 400lb wife in her bikini while the people at the next towel argue over the potato salad spewing obscenities like they've learned a new word and the 20-somethings kitty corner from you play their punk dance mix music wearing just enough not to show you their Prince Albert.  Yeah....the beach....not so fun!  Those 90 degree days find me in the house, blasting the air conditioners and waiting for the sun to go down before I venture out to get the mail.

Give me Autumn any day!  The sunshine takes on this amber quality, kind of like honey, and everything glows.  You can wear a soft, fuzzy sweater and be comfortable, or maybe a beat up old flannel over a soft t-shirt.  Campfires are still in but now you don't sweat toasting your marshmallows.  When it rains you want to just curl up with a book and doze on the couch.  The kids go back to school, make new friends, and those early months of school are exciting and fun.  Halloween is approaching, the festival of Samhain, and something inside you recognizes that this....this is a time to appreciate life, to be thankful for the good things, and not get bogged down in the bad.  After sunset the growing night gets so dark that you can nearly touch the blackness.  You know Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner but they're still far enough away....you don't have to really think about them yet other than in a day dream sort of way.  You're more apt to enjoy every moment of sunshine, soaking up every spare moment of it, worshiping the warmth and light with some primal part of you that you can't even name, knowing that soon it will be a cold, far too cold to do more than peer at through a frosted window.   Give me the honey gold glow of autumn days and the velvet black nights any day!