Late Fall

Right Lane Closed
Until Late Fall

This is the large sign that is currently flashing away at the train crossing closest to my house. It brings up many questions for me, including: If just the right lane is closed, why is the entire crossing blocked off? Wouldn't it be so much simpler to say on the sign: "Road Closed Until Late Fall"?

I tried, I have to admit, walking over that crossing yesterday morning. In my defense, it is where I cross to get to the train station on my way to work every morning, and I am nothing if not a creature of habit. At 6:04 every morning for the last two years, I have been crossing the tracks right there, and yesterday my body turned before the rest of me—or at least the important thinking part of me—took in the fact that the road around the tracks was ripped up.

While I realize that I could simply step over each of the rails, I am forever haunted by that scene in Fried Green Tomatoes when Chris O'Donnell gets his foot caught by the railroad ties and thank the good Lord you don't actually see him get hit by the train. I know I don't wear lace-up boots like he does, but still: I am a large proponent of railroad safety.

So it looks like from now until late fall I will be walking down the Prairie Path to cross at Main, and it's actually that idea of "late fall" that stopped me short when I saw the flashing sign.

Late fall.

Every year in August, I stop being able to imagine other seasons.

The grass this year is turning brown and prickly; aside from a few bursts of storms, it hasn't rained in weeks.

The sun blisters and burns daily, sending us all inside to hide in the air conditioning.

Even the idea of sitting on the porch with a sweating glass of lemonade sound impossible: There is too much sweat involved in that image.

The daylilies are nothing but opportunities to dead-head, and I snap off the shriveled petals every chance I get. There is a certain satisfaction to that akin to sweeping off your porch or vacuuming under the bed; you are, in all cases, doing a clean sweep.

Late fall.

I try to bring up images of rainy Saturdays, and I try to remember biting winds promising a season of eating soup and baking bread. I think of sweaters and hoodies and scarves.

But in August all I can see is the summer days stretching before me, as if they are all I've ever known and ever will know. It's summer, and won't it always be summer?

No.

One day it will be late fall again, and I will be able to cross the tracks where I always do.

On the Train After Voting

I am on the train to work—a later train than I normally take because I voted on my way to the station today. I vote at the library, so it's just across the street from me, and I love stepping into that normally quiet building at 6am to hear it buzzing with neighbors.

One woman was in running tights and a reflector vest—clearly just finishing a run, judging from her quick breaths. Several people were train commuters like me, bags slung over the shoulder and multiple glances at the clock: we must make that train to get to work to rush through the day to rush home.

And then there were the older retired people working the poll. Did they decide to work because they've always loved doing their part? Because they're up early anyway? Because they get to talk to all kinds of people?

One woman, the one who checked me in (it still amazes me that I never have to show ID—I just need to sign a paper saying that I am the person listed there), wore a denim jacket and a star-covered scarf. This small touch of patriotism made me like her so much, even when she had trouble understanding my name and I had to resort to, “W-A-L-K-E-R. Walker. Like a person who walks. No, not Walter.” (A person who walts?)

We got it figured out, and now I'm proudly wearing my “I voted” sticker and wondering how it'll all turn out.

There's such a malaise, an annoyance, an apathy now, isn't there? People are tired of talking about politics, and they're tired of hearing about politicians—but that's all our news is about, it seems. Campaigning and those terrible, unhelpful ads start earlier and earlier every election, and if we all agree that we ignore them and if we all want to scream by the time the election comes around, why has this become a normal, accepted part of our elections?

It's just like with Christmas decorations: Every year stores put them up earlier, and every year we all roll our eyes and nostalgically remember the good old days when it didn't become Christmas time until after Thanksgiving—and then we buy decorations and wrapping paper in September, perpetuating the idea that we, the consumers, are demanding a Christmas shopping season that lasts 9 months.

We've done this to ourselves—the decorations and the elections—but we still look around in shock, blinking in surprise at what our daily lives have become. And then we step out of the voting booth, button up our coats, and step outside into the November chill, hopeful for today that something will change.

l is for lunch

Recently, I've been reading books that either explicitly or implicitly remind me to slow down and appreciate the moment where I find myself.

From MFK Fisher, I've been sampling The Art of Eating, which is a book of essays on the joy of food. If there is anything to make you savor a moment, it is an essay on rich meals shared with a wealth of friends. Reading this book, you can't help but plan a dinner party in your head, one that hopefully comes off like something out of a Katharine Hepburn film.

For me, it doesn't hurt that MFK {should I start referring to myself as KA?} lived in Aix-en-Provence for a while and wrote a book about that little town where I lived, too, for a bit. Map of Another Town: When I read that for the first time, I was very much convinced that I was back in Aix, so when I looked up from the page and saw just the normal street outside my normal suburban apartment, I felt let down. Reading about MFK sitting in a cafe on the Cours Mirabeau felt like reading a much more literary version of my own journal.

In one essay in The Art of Eating (in this series called "An Alphabet for Gourmets"}, MFK writes, "A is for dining alone, and so am I, if a choice must be made between most people I know and myself. This misanthropic attitude is one I am not proud of, but it is firmly there, based on my increasing conviction that sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly."

And that is firmly what I believe. She wrote out my thoughts long before I was alive to have them, and here I am, nodding along with her through the rest of her essay. Is is good to take pleasure in the small moment of eating alone; MFK and I know this.

Take right now for instance. It is lunchtime at work, and I'm surrounded by the din of other people's conversations. They are discussing the Bears game; I don't have much to add beyond an awareness that they are playing tonight.

Or they are talking about how much Halloween candy they still have at home and should they bring it in? {No, by the way, is the answer to that. We have enough here from everyone else who thought of that idea first.}

These people around me are talking about any number of things, and I get to wrap myself up in their dull roar, their hum of connection. It is all to me nothing but so much background noise, and I sit here alone.

Oh, don't feel sorry for me. I'm looking out the window at this November drizzle and thinking of Normandy. This rain is a Normandy rain, a kind of rain I got to know quite well when I lived there. It is gentle and persistent, but here today, it is warmer than a typical rainy day there—at least in my memory. But it's quiet and beautiful, and I walked to the train station this morning sans umbrella—in honor of those Normans who see little need for an umbrella on a day like this, a day when it's barely but constantly raining.

Eating alone, I can let my mind wander, and that is why I don't want you to feel sorry for me: because in these moments at lunch, I don't have to think of anything particular or do anything productive. I can just be here, at a slowed-down pace, taking in where I am.

Just like MFK.

an introvert in the woods

Over the weekend, I took a little retreat from my normal life, or as I like to refer to it: I ran away from home for a night. It's so much more satisfying, by the way, to run away from home when you're old enough to drive.

I brought Miss Daisy the Pug with me to go camping at the Richard Bong Recreation Area near Kenosha, Wisconsin. I picked that because 1) it was the first thing that turned up with I googled "camping near Kenosha" that wasn't an RV store, 2) it was just an hour and 20 minutes away, and 3) I could reserve a campsite with just a few days' notice. All these campgrounds in Illinois, you have to reserve a week in advance, or of course, you can risk it and just show up.

Risking it is not in my genetic make-up, and if I'm going to drive an hour+ after packing a car of camping supplies, I would like to be darn sure that will be a campsite with my name on it at the other end.

So to Wisconsin I went, where they allow for my level of spontaneity: you can make reservations with 3 days' notice and feel assured of your "spur-of-the-moment" planning.

It was such a good decision.

I've never done the solo camping thing, although I am well-equipped for it. By that I mean that I have all the stuff necessary, but I also mean that I have the personality necessary. I told a few people at work on Friday what I was doing, and I received mostly comments of awe that I would dare to do that.

"Won't you be scared?"

"But it's so dark!"

"Who will you talk to?"

"What if you have a problem?!?"

"Are you going to pretend to be Thoreau and come back with your journals to publish? Are you going to talk exclusively about living deliberately when you come back on Monday?"

But all I kept thinking—ever since I made the reservation—was, "I can feel my soul expanding with this possibility of being so far away from my normal life." {No offense to all the people in my normal life.}

My introvert self was very much made for solo camping trips, and thanks to my parents, who began outfitting me with camping equipment when I was still quite young, I have everything I need to run away from home and pitch a tent and cook over a grill and pump my own water out of a spigot that looks like it's been there since Laura Ingalls Wilder was alive.

I love camping for many reasons, and it's one of the continual joys of my life that my parents raised me on a foundation of outdoorsy-ness. {It's such a joy that I've even written about it before when I was flying over the desert on the way to Las Vegas.}

I love camping now because it reminds me of growing up, and I can't set foot in a campground without remembering the hundreds of other campgrounds I've been in {all blending into a generalized one, of course, with a mish-mash of red rocks, mountain streams, and tall trees that always smell sweet in the morning air}.

I think about how my sister and I used to spend hours (it seemed) riding the loops of various campgrounds on our bikes. We'd read for awhile, bike for awhile, volunteer to go get water, set up our own steeplechase course {hey, you see what sorts of activities you come up with when you are so far from humanity that you start to think it's normal to shower just once a week}.

And in the evenings, our whole family would sometimes take long bike rides around whatever national park or state park we were in before settling in to play Hearts or study the stars. {All those star lessons, and all I can pick out with any confidence is Orion, Cassiopeia, and the Big Dipper.}

So I love camping for that nostalgic reason—but I also love it because it pares you down to the essential. Everything—from boiling water to cooking breakfast—takes longer than you ever budget for in your regular life, and there's a quiet beauty in saying: I would like coffee, but it's going to be a little while. Delayed pleasure and all that.

Your day essentially becomes about the survival tasks, and so instead of running from activity to activity, you take your time and focus on where you are. I am scrambling eggs over a grill. I am boiling water to clean the skillet. I am doing the crossword while drinking coffee.

I think that's what I needed when I ran away from home: to be present where I am. There is nothing else in a campground to distract me, unlike at home where I could always be cleaning a bathroom or organizing recipes or re-doing my budget. There's always some task to be done, but in a campground, I cannot do any of that.

I cannot clean the bathroom; it's a pit toilet and the thought of cleaning that is something to avoid contemplating for very long.

I cannot do laundry; I wear the same clothes for several days.

I cannot see friends; they are over an hour away back home.

When I was camping, it was just me and my little pug surrounded by trees and a soft dampness to the air that helps you remember that life is more than running from one thing to the next.

And as a bonus, when camping alone with a pug, you get to see faces like this all the time—faces that say, "But I thought we lived inside!"

on the track at 4:45am

All I have to say is that it is fall, and I cannot step outside right now without instantly believing that all—ALL—is possible.

This morning I ran in a long-sleeve shirt and shorts, which is my favorite running outfit combination. I took that first deep breath of air that has a snap to it, and as I do every year, I thought of freshly sharpened pencils and folders.

Those school supply dreams would have to wait; later, I told myself this morning, when you get to the office, you can sharpen some pencils and file something away in a folder. For now, it's running time.

Speedwork time was more like it. It was 4:45, and I was on the track at Wheaton College, ready to do some 4x200s and some 2x800s, all in the hopes of breaking my best half-marathon time when I run my next race in October. If I can get my legs used to moving fast, they'll just keep up that pace for 13.1 miles, right?

I had expected to have the track all to myself. Did I mention yet that it was 4:45?!? And that I was at a college?!? No college student should be awake at that time, but I saw, out on the far straightaway, someone else running.

This was all I needed to kick my competitive spirit into overdrive.

You beat me here, person who is nothing but a dull blob out on the track? Then I will beat you running.

I took off down the straightaway, trying to remember the last time I was on a track.

I ran track in middle school for the Horace Mann Yellow Jackets. Our uniforms were maroon and gold, and my most lasting memory of that is almost dropping the baton in a relay once. The girl I was passing off to told everyone on the team that she'd heard me say a bad word at the almost-missed-handoff moment. I was—and still am—enough of a goody-two-shoes that this was major news/gossip to all the other 7th graders, and I spent the rest of the track season saying, "I did NOT say that word! Stop trying to make me say it now! I'm going to go read on the in-field until my race!"

Channeling middle school me wasn't going to help me run faster, so I moved on in my head to other memories of tracks: In high school, we had to run the mile every year, and my senior year, I ran it on the same day I was named to the Homecoming Court. And I ran it really, really slowly with a growing pain in my side.

On about lap 3, I thought: Well, it turns out that being on the Homecoming Court does not automatically make your life better and easier, contrary to what many Disney movies would like us to believe.

Just before the end of the mile, I must admit {although I'm not proud of it}, I thought: Should I really be forced to do this? I'm basically royalty in this school, and I need to stay at my best for my very full schedule of Court-duties over the next week. There's a cake walk to preside over and a bonfire to attend, not to mention planning how my hair will be done with that tiara in it. If I were real royalty, people would be running this mile for me, and all I would have to do would be clap from the royal box while drinking lemonade.

Almost-the-Homecoming-Queen me was obviously not into running, so I stopped thinking about her.

Besides, I was gaining on the guy, just by being my 31-year-old self who likes to get up early to workout and who will not allow other people to beat her at 4:45am.

As I flew past the guy—turns out he was not a college student but a middle-aged man—I sang out a quick, "Good morning!"

And even though I was 3 lanes over from the guy and even though I'm sure he had to have heard me coming {what with my heavy reminiscing about the Homecoming Court and how I don't swear}, he jumped about 2 feet in the air when I came by. I had become a creepy runner who scares people, when all I was trying to do was enjoy the cool fall morning—and beat that guy.

You know, when I say it like that, it kind of makes sense that he was taken aback by me.

But I beat him. Let's focus on that. As I came around the straightaway in front of the stands, I raised my arms in triumph and bowed to the crowd.

i've got plenty to be thankful for

If I could, I would make a quilt out of tradition and sit under it all winter.

This plan is dependent on me being able to quilt, which I can't do, and it's also dependent on being able to take intangible but comforting things and make them into fabric, which sounds like something Rumpelstiltskin would be peddling.

Of course I'm thinking about tradition as we approach Thanksgiving, that very traditional holiday where most of us eat the same thing at the same time, a feat that doesn't happen on many other days.

With other holidays, there's leeway in the menu: some people eat ham at Christmas, for example, while others might go for Christmas goose. My family has never done that, but doesn't it sound like something that would happen in Little Women—if, I guess, they hadn't been so poor and given away their scant Christmas dinner to an even-poorer family so that the girls {and their readers for generations to come} could learn generosity?

The Fourth of July might involve hot dogs or hamburgers or, if you're in Morning Sun, Iowa, with me, pulled pork sandwiches and a lot of potato salad.

Thanksgiving, though: it's hard to mess with Thanksgiving, as evidenced by this conversation with my mom.

Me, the Ever-helpful Daughter: Hey, do you want me to make anything for Thanksgiving this year? I could bring home my recipe book.

Mama, She Who Has Hosted Thanksgiving Forever: No, I think we're all set. Just so you know, though, we aren't having the creamed corn this year.

Me, the Rooted-in-Tradition Daughter: [Long, long pause] What do you mean? I don't understand. We're from Iowa. Isn't there a law that says we have to eat corn?

Mama, Who Probably Should've Mentioned This to Me Earlier: Your aunt wants to bring cauliflower gratin.

Me, the Doubter: Is this because of the drought affecting the corn crop? I just watched that new Ken Burns documentary on PBS about the Dust Bowl, and so I'm in tune with these agricultural disasters. Is there not enough corn to feed us all?

Mama, Who, After Almost 31 Years Should've Figured Out I'm Not Good with Last Minute Change: Of course there's enough corn. We just thought we'd try something new.

Me, Trying to Change the Subject: Speaking of things that are new, FDR's New Deal brought in a lot of change that helped mitigate the effects of the Dust Bowl. Can we talk about major government programs now instead of how you want to step on the face of Thanksgiving tradition? That's like stepping on the face of a pilgrim, fyi.

Oh, I do like my tradition, but the thing is, I also like cauliflower gratin. The Barefoot Contessa has a very good recipe for it that I've made several times, and hey, it involves cheese. Most things are better with either cheese, bacon, or chocolate added to it—sometimes all three {but certainly not in the case of cauliflower}.

This corn-less Thanksgiving will still be Thanksgiving, I know, and I do have plenty to be thankful for—a phrase that makes me think of Bing Crosby and Holiday Inn and another Thanksgiving tradition.

When I was in high school, my friends and I would march {oh, yes, we were band nerds} in the Lighted Holiday Parade on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I have many pictures of me in a band uniform {with very square shoulders: the shoulder pads in that thing were impressive}, wearing a Santa Claus hat, holding my flugle, and getting ready to step off down Jefferson Street playing a jazzy {yet marchable} version of "The Little Drummer Boy."

{And no, I don't plan on going to the work of scanning any of those pictures and then posting them. No need for that to be seen.}

Afterwards, we'd all eat Christmas cookies and watch Holiday Inn at my friend Sara's house. It was the beginning of Christmas, as we'd warm up with hot cocoa and sing along with Bing. It was normal and cozy and the kind of Saturday night activity that band nerds are prone to do.

Perhaps to get over the lack of corn, I should watch Holiday Inn this year. At the very least, I should watch the "I've Got Plenty to Be Thanksful For" clip from the Thanksgiving part of the movie.

You should watch it, too: here's a link.

---------------

And bonus connection to talking about FDR and the New Deal earlier in an attempt to change the subject with my mother {it's below the line so you're not required to read this history fact if you don't want to learn something awesome}: You'll see at the beginning of this clip, there's a little cartoon turkey who moves back and forth between two Thursdays in November.

That's because in 1939, FDR moved Thanksgiving to the second-to-last Thursday in November—not the last Thursday as it had been since Abraham Lincoln set it. And as we all know, you do not mess with anything Abraham Lincoln did.

He did it to give more shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas—the country was still pulling out of the Depression, you know, and the more time for shopping, the better. Incidentally, that phrase was also in the running to replace the E Pluribus Unum slogan for America: The more time for shopping, the better.

People got upset. Really upset. That FDR, he thought he could do anything, even change holidays. What was next? Christmas in July?

Since the states also have some power in these United States of ours, some states decided to reject FDR's Thanksgiving Proclamation and can you imagine the confusion? When do you get off work? What if your family was in a different state? What would the pilgrims think?

Seriously, this was a serious issue, and it went on for a couple of years—until Congress passed a law that Thanksgiving would always be the fourth Thursday in November.

I know that our current Congress has really important things to be doing {STOP holding press conferences about how you're looking forward to a bipartisan solution to the fiscal cliff and fix the dang cliff}, but I would appreciate it if they would, at some point soon, pass a law saying that creamed corn will always be served at Iowa Thanksgivings.

on the corner of 8th Avenue and Possibility

On the corner of 8th Avenue and Possibility, a girl sits on a bench.

Oh, she knows that there's no such street as Possibility, but that is how she's come to think of this corner.

From here, the Possibilities are—well, as innumerable as the people flowing past on this Manhattan evening.

She comes here most Wednesday evenings, just to sit and watch, although she supposed that'll change when winter comes.

Already, she has her scarf wrapped tight against the October breeze, but maybe her Wednesday evening tradition won't have to change, she says to herself. With the right warm clothes and a hot cocoa to look forward to, she could still come here to take in the Possibilities.

She hasn't lived in New York City very long—a few months—and it wasn't long after she moved here from Mishawaka, Indiana {"What a name!" people always say, as if she might've invented it} that she started coming to this corner.

It started quite by accident one Wednesday after work: she had a pebble stuck in her shoe. She was in her heels and always worried about catching the heel in a grate on the sidewalk, but here she was with a pebble.

And so she sat down on this bench on 8th Avenue to get it out. Annoyance gone, she looked up and suddenly realized how tired she was.

It had been a long day {up by 5am!} and sitting, just for a moment, made her feel that her day had been full of pebbles, little annoyances, and that she'd spent all day pulling them out of the metaphorical shoe.

But sitting down, she could slow down.

She could take in the world marching past on the gridded streets of New York City, and that day, she actually said out loud—before she could stop herself—"It's a sea of humanity, it really is."

What a true and obvious thing to say, she had thought then, and watched all the people with all their lives.

Tourists: always looking up, as if they've never seen a building more than three stories high.

Couples on their way to a Broadway show, both of them dressed up.

Other workerbees making their way home, perhaps just as tired as she was.

Babies in strollers.

Men dropping the restaurant garbage bags on the corner.

Homeless people with their McDonald's cups out, jingling for spare change.

A sea of humanity and a world of possibilities.

That day, as she looked down the street at the hot dog man {just $2 for a meal! This is living!}

and as she looked kitty-corner at the fancy ice cream place {artisanal is probably the better word}

and as she was bathed in an orange glow like a Technicolor dream from the digital billboard across the street,

she had decided to come here every Wednesday evening to remember that the world is bigger than small pebbles and little annoyances. It's bigger than a desk job and buying new shoes and the day-to-day life we can get so focused on and it's even bigger than Broadway.

There are Possibilities all around us, if only we'd sit down to take them in, as she does every Wednesday evening on that bench on 8th Avenue.

find your fall rhythm

"Find your fall rhythm."

This is part of the Starbucks fall ad campaign, and the poster I saw this morning had a woman wearing a creamy, dreamy cardigan, haloed by golden autumnal sunshine, and smiling beatifically—presumably because she was thinking about a pumpkin spice latte.

Starbucks gives suggestions for your fall rhythm: leaping into leaf piles and screaming at the sidelines, but aren't those more high notes than rhythm?

Those are the things that make fall so enticing, so iconic, so memorable&dmash;but they can't be part of your everyday rhythm, the beat alternately pushing and pulling you along.

Leaping into a leaf pile every day would mean:

• you'd need rake leaves every day, or
• you'd need to closely monitor your neighbors for their raking habits—sneaking in to jump in their pile just when they look up to appreciate the color play between the red leaves still on the tree and the blue sky
• you'd eventually reach a point when you see a pile of leaves and want to run screaming from it. Too much of a good thing.
• Also, you may end up with leaves in your hair a lot. The wood sprite look, you know.

A fall rhythm is for finding a groove—not a rut but a beat for walking through your day, and you can't find a beat if you're randomly jumping into leaf piles.

It's about buckling down for work and feeling proud when the job is done and done well, an idea that must be in our DNA from generations of harvest time. To see the sheaves of wheat in a field at sunset: that is a fall rhythm, and with the first brisk morning, we are drawn to it.

And if that first time you see your breath again in the early morning doesn't make you think of wheat, it might make you think of school. You may have been out of school for years—longer than you were even in it—but come mid-September, you may feel a need to buy every college-ruled notebook you see at Target.

You may yearn to draw up a schedule for the day, one that beings with free reading time in your homeroom {No, seriously, why can't we begin every work day with that?}.

Perhaps you want to pick up a textbook, cover it with an old grocery bag, and then, finally, really get straight what the Stamp Act meant.

A fall rhythm is about order and closure.

But paradoxically: it's also about disorder and beginning.

The leaves fall chaotically, and we make plans for winter projects, many of them involving a facet of self-improvement.

I will cook one new recipe a week.

I will swim twice a week.

I will read Dickens and Austen.

That sort of self-improvement thing: as the world becomes a stripped down version of itself, we want to build ourselves up, perhaps yearning to fill out all the gaps nature is leaving behind in color, warmth, and growth.

So you see, fall's rhythm is confused and always changing temp; by its very nature—its very weather—fall keeps us guessing.

As much as it makes us long for stability, it's, of course, a transition season, and you never feel that more than in the early morning as you're trying to figure out what to wear.

It may be 39 degrees out at the moment, but you know that by mid-day, it'll be in the upper 60s or even 70s. How to prepare for this? How to dress?

This is why, I believe, the fleece vest was invented. It is the epitome of the transition clothing and helps keep one part of you warm while letting another part breathe easy. You are ready for cold and warm at the same time, plus you look outdoorsy and like you might take a hike at any moment, maybe over to the Starbucks, where you will order a pumpkin spice latte and think: Fall, can you please stay forever?

fall song {a poem, not by me}

On a cool, bright morning like this—a morning after a day of rain—I want nothing more than to write a poem.

But.

There is the dog to be walked and breakfast to be eaten and work to be done.

So I turn to Mary Oliver, that quiet poet of hushed beauty, that writer who can whisper the profound and make you feel like truth has seeped into every corner of your soul.

A morning like this, when there is no time for my own poetry but there is still time for Poetry: this is when Mary Oliver comes in handy.

Fall Song
Mary Oliver

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

a picture a day keeps fall here to stay

That's true, right? That a picture a day keep fall here to stay?

If I can document the color, then it never has to fade. Let's pretend that is true, and look at this tree I pass every day on my walk with Little Pug.

It is fall. It is brilliant, even on a gray day like today. It is what I want to remember from this time, even as I notice day by day that it's changing and we're marching ever closer to winter.

In fact, I think I will take a picture every day of this tree: to help me pay attention.

{As a bonus, this will also probably confuse Little Pug: Why do you stop here every day? She will ask me that with her eyes, and I will tell her stories about fall. I'm sure she'll appreciate my rhapsodizing about colors when all she wants to do is go on a walk.}

a second spring

My mother sent me an email today to tell me that she'd thought I'd like this quote:

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

Albert Camus said that, the great French existentialist.

How beautiful and how relatable, which isn't something I often associate with existentialism.

I more associate it with the glib phrase: my existential crisis, that panic that often hits in the mid-twenties when you're trying to figure out who you are and pay your bills on time and make new friends in an unknown place and realize that your paycheck is the only gold star you're going to get.

Who am I? What am I doing here? How did I become someone who works in a cubicle?

The questions come pounding in, and you freak out.

That is the existential crisis, and you get through it—partly by doing things like noticing that every day has something good in it, something to be thankful for, something worth paying attention to.

Right now, it's the fall leaves. Every one of them is a flower, and I plan on noticing them this year, don't you?

the midas touch of early fall

It is past 6pm when you emerge from the office building, having stayed later than you intended, and now the sun is giving everything a golden look. The Midas touch of early fall.

You had heard all day how beautiful, how matchless it was outside—from the co-worker who went out at lunch to an old high school friend who went on a run along Lake Michigan on her day off and decided to post it on Facebook, this fact that she had been out when the day was perfect.

But you were at your desk all day, facing a window and imagining what it must be like outside, but inside all the same with eyes glazing over in that digital look. You were working on a spreadsheet and working toward this very moment when you would step from the building and into the Midas light.

Here it is now—you turning to gold along with the trees and the stop sign and the road home. There are no impurities in this gold, just a 24-karat gleam to the end of a day that hadn't felt significant until this moment.

quebec in pictures

Place Royale on an early morning run: It got that name when they installed the bust of Louis XIV there. It apparently wasn't enough for him to have Versailles and to be called the Sun King; he also needed this square—considered the cradle of French civilization in North America—to be named after him.

Samuel de Champlain saying to Quebec, "I totally discovered you and claimed you for France. Why is Queen Elizabeth on your money now?"

He's probably also, from his perch on that plinth, thinking: What, the governor's house I built back in 1620 on this ground high above the St-Lawrence River wasn't good enough for you? You had to build the Chateau Frontenac, a fancy hotel, here instead?

Un bol de cafe au lait, s'il vous plait: Coffee in a bowl. I'm going to start offering this to people when they come over for coffee: Would you like an espresso, a Waffle House mug, or this bowl from Ikea?

In France, you can have cafe au lait in a bowl with breakfast—the better for dunking your bread and jam in, you see. But here in Quebec, I discovered you can get it any time, even with lunch, and they won't look at you funny. Bonus points for Quebec.

The only fortified city left in North America: Quebec has also left its cannons out and pointed in various directions. They are ready, should anyone ever try to take them back from the British.

Unless it's themselves: there is a separatist movement here in Quebec, much like how some people in Texas would like to secede from the United States. I'd say if the Quebecois want to be their own country, they can all just hole up in the fortified city, drinking their bowls of cafe au lait, and putting those cannons to good use.

Problem with my plan and why I'm not in charge of countries: The cannons don't work any more, there are no longer doors on any of the gates into the city, and even though the French had the high position and the fortifications, the British still beat them on the Plains of Abraham in 1759.

I would most definitely go to church there, assuming it's an Anglican church, which is a big assumption here in what was once the seat of a Catholic diocese that stretched all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Actually, there is an Anglican church in Quebec—Holy Trinity. It was the first Anglican church built outside of the British Isles, and did you know that it has a section set aside specifically for members of the British Royal Family? No one else can ever sit there, which makes it even more exclusive than the Royal Box at Wimbledon.

Un autre bol de cafe au lait: This one at brunch at Le Clocher Penche in the St-Roch neighborhood. I'm reading the book The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food by Adam Gopnik, and should you ever want to really enjoy eating alone {as I often have to do on work trips like this one}, bring that book.

You can read about the glorious social history of the restaurant and the recipe, all while eating. It will make you appreciate where you are, not feel like the odd (wo)man out in a restaurant of people enjoying conversation and each other.

Later, when you're back with people and you don't have to eat alone, you can dazzle them with trivia about what the French Revolution has to do with the restaurant.

Le Sang des Saints: My meal at Le Clocher Penche, and fyi, that translates to "the blood of the saints." It was boudin noir, a poached egg, pears, and caramelized red onions served over naan with a balsamic reduction. If I purposely forget that "boudin noir" is blood sausage and if I purposely forget how it's made, I love it so much. It makes being forgetful worth it.

The most photographed hotel in the world: That's what they say about the Chateau Frontenac, so I thought I'd add another picture to the count.

quebec: so french and yet

Quebec City truly is a slice of France in North America, although there are these—almost jarring reminders that I'm not actually in France.

I can be walking down a cobblestone alley and it seems so much like I'm back in France, from the just-washed streets in the early morning to the sidewalks that never seem to give enough room for two people to pass each other.

And then I can turn a corner and run into a shop selling hockey jerseys or even football jerseys: this is not France, I have to tell myself. Not France, not France, not France. Repeating it helps me remember.

Seriously. Outdoor cafe. Flowers. Cobblestones. How is this not France?

Plus, the cars are all wrong for this to be France; French cars are smaller, and of course there's the whole different makes/models thing. Here, it's all the same cars as in America on streets that look very French.

This morning on my run, I passed a Jeep Liberty, a Ford F-250, and a Land Rover. Where are the Opels and Renaults? How does an F-250 navigate the back alleys? Not France, not France, not France.

Also on my run this morning, I saw the Chateau Frontenac and plotted ways to move there permanently. This is a diverting way to spend a run when you're doing more hills than you, a person who lives in Illinois, has seen in awhile.

I go back to France every other year or so and the French part of me gets to come out. That's the part that knows what it feels like to have my powers of language stripped down. It's the part that feels triumphant for making it through small talk and the part that knows that if you need help, you have to ask for it, even if you don't know how to say it.

The French part of me knows that loneliness will hurt but it won't destroy you.

And my French side is, in some ways, my writer side because I did so much of it when I lived there—perhaps a by-product of having lost my main form of communication.

That simultaneous feeling of panic {what if I can't get the words out?}, triumph {I did!}, and a need to document it all {what a world we live in!} is something I very much associate with France because that's where I was the foreigner and that's where I tried to make a life, if only for a little while.

To come to Quebec, then—where it looks so much like France and where they do, indeed, speak French {with an accent, although I, of course, also speak French with an accent}—but to have so many things double-signed in English and to hear English so frequently...well, it feels a little topsy-turvy to my French self.

It feels like I've stepped into a blend of France and home—but maybe that's a good place to be.

Chez Temporel: where I had dinner tonight. There was quiche, red wine, chocolate cake, and espresso. I chit-chatted with the people sitting next to me, and they complimented my French, saying I sounded more French than American in my accent. I then asked to be their best friend/if they could call my friends in France and repeat that.

seven years of bad luck? or a fall project?

It's a sign.

On Labor Day, I was in the shower, luxuriating in a schedule that allowed for a midday shower. That morning, I'd read the entire paper*, worked the crossword, journalled, and made a low-pressure to-do list for the day.

It was so low pressure that I'd called it "Labor Day Thoughts." Just some ideas, some passing fancies that might catch my eye during the day.

Sometimes I divide my to-do lists into MUST DOs and NICE TO DOs—this helps me sort and prioritize and avoid that to-do list overload {when you think, 'If I wrote it down, I have to do it, if only for the satisfaction of crossing it off.' This is terrible logic and is slightly akin to the logic of 'If I read it on the Internet, it must be true.'}.

But even that divided to-do list felt too pressured for a day like Labor Day, the last hurrah of the summer. Summer itself is supposed to be low pressure: long meals on the balcony on long, humid evenings, long runs in the the early morning relative cool, long walks with friends, long afternoons reading in the sun.

The last thing Labor Day needed was a long to-do list, so I had my Labor Day Thoughts. Showering was one {and something I could definitely achieve during the day}, so after lunch of leftover eggplant gratin, I was in the shower, thinking a little bit about my love of to-do lists and projects, a little bit of my schedule for the week, and a little bit of how I wish it were fall already.

While shaving my legs, I was thinking about a possible fall project {note: someone who loves to-do lists, projects, and schedules will definitely have seasonal projects}: sprucing up my bathroom.

Maybe some paint? Maybe update the shower, which has frosted glass sliding doors and cream tiles from when the condo was built?

Maybe some earth-tone tiles in the shower like in the bathroom at the Pines Lodge in Beaver Creek, Colorado? {When thinking about updating your home, by the way, it's always entirely realistic to plan to mimic fancy ski lodges that market themselves as a "luxury resort." Man, my demonstrations of logic today are way off; you might be very concerned about my thinking abilities. If I followed this Pines Lodge plan, I would need to have soap shaped like little rocks and fluffy robes out for every guest.}

It was just the beginning of thinking about this bathroom plan, and at that moment, with the razor poised over my knee, my vanity mirror fell off the wall, crashed into the sink, knocked over everything on the vanity, and then crashed to the floor, smashing a bottle of Tresor {this perfume I used to wear} in the process.

It's a sign. It must be a sign. It's as if the vanity mirror was saying, "Take me now! I don't want to be here anymore! Fix this bathroom!"

And that is how I decided to re-do my bathroom.

In related news: How long do you think my bathroom will smell like Tresor? Feel free to place bets.



*"Entire" meaning "all the parts I was interested in." Sorry, Sports section; I don't think you're part of the whole paper, but I did glance at you.

the air tasted of fall

On my run this morning, the air tasted of fall.

The sun rose behind me—a pinkish-orange that was so striking, I wanted to stare at it, even if you're not supposed to do that and so I ran away from it.

My shadow stretched in front of me, and I thought of where my legs had been running recently: on a bike path next to the Colorado River in Glenwood Springs, on a golf course in North Platte, Nebraska, through subdivisions in Dublin, Ohio, and on a wooded trail in Rochester, New York.

Over the past two weeks, I have been everywhere on that road trip across America, and I was always on the go. Even when I was sitting in a car, I was, of course {so obvious!}, moving, and my mind was always moving, too.

Running this morning, though, away from the summer and away from the sun, I felt—ironically—everything slow down.

Not my legs, mind you. Those keep turning over, but it was my mind that stopped turning over and churning.

And I think the answer to why lies not in how early it was or how I've settled back into my routine or how when you're given a break, you always appreciate your life more.

Why did everything slow down? Because the air tasted of fall. It tasted of an expected and welcomed change, and my mind slowed down to expectantly welcome it.

It was the sharp edge in the air, the slight chill as I ran faster, that put me in mind of changing colors, falling leaves, and much later, winter nights with wine.

Hours later, it is now hot, and it seems ridiculous to have thought of winter just this morning as if it were around the corner.

But I did, and throughout the day, as the tasks and conversations picked up their pace around me, I thought of my run this morning—and slowed down.

i will never be warm again: lessons from the cold

When the weather turns cold again, there is a moment every year when you think, 'I will never be warm again. The earth will never come out of the winter it's heading into.'

Then you realize that it's actually 37 degrees and that it will, unfortunately but inevitably in the Midwest, get much colder.

Please tell me that you have this moment, too, so that I don't feel like such a wuss, someone so unworthy to be a descendent of my farming ancestors {and in one case, a peddling ancestor—no, for real, one of my ancestors, someone not that far back in the family tree, was a peddler}.

My moment came last night. I was walking Miss Daisy, and I had on a hat, my mittens from Norway, and a wool scarf wrapped tightly and tucked into my coat. I was shivering from the cold and yet I couldn't even really see my breath in the still night air.

It will get so much colder, and my body will acclimate.

This is the great wonder and lesson of living somewhere with four season.

The Wonder

Every few months, the scenery drastically changes, and we get to take in spring buds, humidity, falling leaves, and snow. This keeps us from much monotony because even a drive to the grocery store will eventually look different—colors, lack of colors, leaves, lack of leaves, everything in white because it's an icy-snow mess and you better hope you don't slide and you really should've put together that winter preparedness kit, etc.

Speaking of the grocery store and food, we have come so far from when food selection was limited by the seasons or canning. I feel qualified to say something like this because of the aforementioned farming ancestors.

Now, as we're all aware, you can pretty much get anything at any time of the year. Yes, there are times when certain produce is better—when it's at its peak, I do believe it's called, when what is really meant it: it's the traditional harvest time.

If you get apples in February, they won't be as peak-full as in the fall when you're supposed to be making apple pies and applesauce and whatever else you can think of to make with the five bushels of apples you somehow ended up with after apple picking.

But you can still get apples in February.

You can get strawberries in November, if you have a whim to make strawberry shortcake for Thanksgiving.

We no longer have to wait for the harvest; we no longer get the anticipation of waiting for the season's first plum and then biting into it—delicious, so sweet, and so cold. This is just to say: we have lost something when we got pulled so far off the land, and I'm glad we have the wonder of seasons to remind us that we used to be more tied to the land.

The Lesson

The seasons teach that it is possible to adapt to change. You may forget every year how cold it gets, but it won't take long for you to pull out the long underwear, find the warm gloves, and remember how cozy your home feels when you first step inside from a -20 degree day.

We're all much more adaptable than we think. We do get used to change, and the seasons remind us of our great adaptability.

This is important to remember when something so large and shifting happens in your life—that you're sure you'll never be able to adjust.

Think of things like your best friend getting married or people having babies or even you yourself getting into a relationship. I should stress that these are all good things {babies mean, for example, that you get to buy adorable clothes—little sweater vests! tiny dresses with ruffles!—and look forward to videos of the baby giggling}.

But just as we're an adaptable people, we're also a freak-out-about-change people. It's natural to see how everything will be different, and it's also natural to skip over the fact that different isn't actually synonymous with bad.

Different can be nice, once you get used to it.

Just like the humidity in the summer and the snow in the winter.

when it turns cold, my thoughts turn to england

When the weather turns cold and damp—just as it's been this week—my thoughts naturally turn to England, and my reading choices soon follow.

My mind associates the wet cold with England because:

• That's what it was like when I lived there. It was a semester abroad—the fall term—and while I'm sure there were sunny days, what I mostly remember is wet leaves, an ineffective umbrella, and slick steps outside the National Portrait Gallery, where I'd go to look at Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee who caused a king to give up his throne. In her portrait, she almost smirks haughtily down at you as if she's in on a joke. {The punchline for that joke may be, “...and then I almost destroyed the monarchy!”}
  
  I was drawn to her portrait time and again, possibly because other wings of the National Portrait Gallery involved many, many oil paintings of people in lace collars who looked like they'd been eating lumpy porridge for every meal for 13 years.
  
  In Wallis' portrait, though, she has a sprig of flowers pinned to her blue shirtdress, and when I looked up at her, she seemed to be saying, “Oh, forget these British people. They're a tricky lot to figure out, so show them some American gumption, just like I did.”
  
  It seems silly to say now, especially after reading more of her story and seeing how she was portrayed in The King's Speech, but when I needed a boost on a foggy day in London-town, I'd go visit Wallis, my fellow American. She made the rain and cold and loneliness seem laughable, like a big joke that we were both in on.
• of that scene in Sense and Sensibility when Marianne and Margaret Dashwood are on a rainy walk through the Devonshire countryside. “Is there a felicity in the world superior to this? Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours,” Marianne enthuses over the little bits of blue sky peeking through, as Jane Austen describes it, “a showery sky.”
  
  Don't say things like that, Marianne—that thing about felicity and walking. You are the personification of flights of fancy in Jane's world, and I think I should let you know: she's using you to teach a lesson about how impulsiveness and unguarded emotions lead to tumbles down rain-slicked hills overlooking the sea. Literally and metaphorically.
  
  Going on and on about blue sky and the animating gales of a southwesterly is not going to end well for you, Marianne, so you may as well come in from the rain and embroider something.
  
  I am so like Elinor. Thank heavens. But that also helps explain why rainy days make me want to stay inside with a book, preferably one set in England.

I went to the library recently with this goal in mind: get something set in England.

Having just re-read Persuasion and wanting to avoid appearing like a one-trick pony {not that I'm concerned about my personal brand, but I do think it should be more than "I am obsessed with Jane Austen"}, I decided to expand beyond Jane; I went for Elizabeth Gaskell.

That's Elizabeth Gaskell of Cranford, Wives and Daughters, and North and South.

The Elizabeth Gaskell who wrote in the mid-1800s and who has been so good to the BBC and its desire to make every book written in the 1800s into a period drama they can cheer the nation with on Sunday nights through the cold, damp England fall and winter.

I pulled Wives and Daughters off the shelf and then glanced to the right at the book right next to it. This is one of great pleasures of the library, by the way: going to a section where you need one book, and then taking a look around to see what else that section has to offer.

If I'm ever in a reading bind—and it does happen, especially when I have no seasonal promptings to read things set in England—I pick a letter and then go to that section of fiction. With my head tilted and my fingers tracing the spines, I don't let myself leave until I find a book or two, maybe even something out of my typical reading likes.

Right next to Wives and Daughters was a book by Whitney Gaskell. 'Maybe she's a great-great granddaughter!' I thought, nerdily excited by this idea of a modern-day Elizabeth Gaskell.

I stood on my tippy-toes to pull the book down and saw there was no way in heck I was checking this book out.

That is, until I read the back cover.

-----

I'll tell you why soon, I promise.

away, away they must go

It was a cold fall morning, feeling for all the chill in the air just as November 1 should. As I walked baby pug down a side street and past a house with a bright red door and a For Sale sign out front, the birds above us chattered the solfege.

Do-re-mi, they said to one another, perched {a word made for birds, I tell you} in a tree that still had most of its leaves, which were finch-gold and full of glory and grace.

The leaves hid the birds; looking up into the branches spreading across the pink sky, all I saw were leaves and all I heard was birdsong, as full of glory and grace as the leaves hiding the little singers.

A movement then—was it me? Or the pug?

A movement—a signal from time immemorial, perhaps—set them off, and in one flap of their wings, they were away.

For just a moment, it seemed the tree was moving, flying away, lifting off. The birds were extended branches, and because of them, the tree stood taller, scratched more of the sky.

The small black birds had stopped singing, and now they were no longer hidden by the golden leaves. They were dotting the sky above me—away, away they must go.

The manipulation of air: that was all there was to hear as the birds aimed up and away. Wings moving air, and even in an instant, I thought of the beauty of physics and creation. Science and nature together {can they ever be apart?} give the illusion of magic at times.

All around me, gold pieces were falling, gently—a ballet of the season. The leaves felt released when the birds revealed themselves, and down the leaves fell as up the birds rose.

I stood in the midst of falling gold and heard the birds start singing again as they decided on a direction. This way, this way—they beckoned to each other.

And the leaves piled on the ground.

curled up in a chair after a run

I'm curled up in a Victorian antiquey-looking chair in the Shipwright Inn in Charlottetown, PEI.

This morning, I ran a half-marathon past mansions and big box stores.

Down a crushed gravel path that used to be the train line here on the Island.

Through farmland and industrial parks.

And into the maritime wind—I should most definitely point that out.

Whipping off the ocean and zipping up University Avenue, the wind was constant for 5 miles, and it's hard to know how to make yourself aerodynamic.

Head down? Head up into the wind, into the adversity? {Is that reading too much into the wind?}

Is it worth it to pump your arms, or is that wasting precious energy? Perhaps I should just flail my arms?

I considered at one point giving some sort of Tarzan yell into the wind {maybe a Jane yell?}, but I knew it would only whip back in my face, and it probably wouldn't sound as ferocious as I intended.

This morning, it was sunny, and I pushed into the wall of wind with all my force but I didn't give a Tarzan yell. I finished the race slower than my goal time, but a Midwesterner like me is not made for maritime winds. Nothing like today's wind ever whips off the Mississippi back home in Iowa, and there is a great sense of accomplishment in subduing and conquering the wind.

Right now, it's raining out, and I'm curled up in a chair that probably was not designed for curling. The designer of this carved-wood, straight-backed, cream-upholstery-covered chair probably had ideas of excellent posture and crossed ankles and bone china cups and saucers held delicately.

I am ignoring its design and settling in for comfort, French press coffee on the table in front of me and a window to the rain behind me.

A tree in all its autumnal glory is shaking its leaves, and I imagine what it would be like to be sitting in that tree on a sun-bright day, curled up in the branches instead of in this chair. It wouldn't be comfortable, I know, but I like to pretend that it would be.

Pitter-patter goes the rain outside this house that was built in the 1870s. If it weren't for the telephone wire crossing my view, I could also be in the 1870s, although if I were, I would not have run a race into the wind this morning and I would not be sitting very improperly in this antiquey-looking chair. If I were in the 1870s, it would just be called a chair, of course—no need for old qualifiers.