Hands-down, my favorite time of year is Fall, particularly because these days fall gets swept away by Christmas as soon as the Halloween jack-o-lanterns are extinguished.
Yesterday was my mother’s birthday. She has been gone from my life for what seems like an eternity. For some reason, I remembered with great clarity a Thanksgiving Day years ago.
Indian summer had come late to Maryland. The leaves were down, but the muted fall colors remained. Not the bright reds and oranges, but the rust, beige, browns and gold.
I stood on the sidewalk of the only house I remember living in as a child, wrapped in a dress I loved and my mother’s sweater. My mother, who could have been an operatic soprano had she not had five children, stood in the kitchen, cooking and singing.
She’d opened the kitchen window and the smell of dinner and the sound of her voice drifted around me, mixing with the late afternoon sun. And I fell madly in love with everything in the world at that exact moment.
I realize now how rare those feelings are of pure, joyous mad love. I twirled again and again, my arms thrown wide to see how far my skirt could bell, the scent of Shalimar drifting from my mother’s sweater, my shadow on the sidewalk bathed in the kind of warmth that only happens in November where just behind that warmth, winter stands armed and ready.
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