Autumn in New York

I'm just a little over two weeks away from my vacation in New York State and Maine, and I will definitely need a vacation by then. Our IT director is on vacation for 8 days in Tennessee; when he comes back on 10/2, the training coordinator will be on vacation for a week. Then finally it's MY turn. While I'm up north I'll be going to an autumn party given by my friends Glenn and Kathleen, visiting relatives and other friends, spending a couple of days in Maine with my brother Steve (watch out Freeport and LL Bean, we're a-comin'), and enjoying what will hopefully be a spectacular display of autumn foliage.

Of all the seasons that Florida doesn't have, I think I miss autumn the most. I really like autumn. I used to get ribbed that it was because my birthday is in October. But I think some of it had to do with the start of school. Up north school starts in September after Labor Day. (Florida generally starts in early August, and this year one school district started during the last week of July. Poor kids.) After a summer of doing whatever I wanted - riding bicycles, swimming, reading, watch soap operas and Phil Donahue - I almost welcomed the return of structure and discipline, and all things new. New pencils and pens . . . new crayons (always Crayolas and always the 64-pack) . . . new notebooks . . . The smell of freshly washed and scrubbed classrooms . . . chalk and glue . . . occasionally new textbooks that smelled wonderful, and if you were lucky you had a teacher who taught you how to break in the book so you wouldn't ruin the binding (I don't remember who taught me, but I still remember the correct way) . . . reading "Chapter 1" . . . getting used to your new desk. And for my siblings and I, some new clothes, new socks, new underwear. All signaling a fresh start, a new beginning.

Autumn also meant soccer season. Always a sports fan, I loved watching soccer and rooting for our high school team, which was usually very good. Standing on the sidelines in the rain, in temperatures so cold you could see your breath, occasionally in snow, and once in a near blizzard. I remember having a dentist's appointment after school one beautiful day, in a hurry because there was a soccer game going on, and while the dentist was working on me, I kept hearing in my head Carly Simon's song, popular at that time, "I Haven't Got Time for the Pain." I DIDN'T have time, I had a soccer game to get to! True story.

They say we don't have a real fall here because the temperature changes so gradually and so subtly that you don't get the brilliant colors, if you get any color at all. The stores, however, are filled with fall decorations, with all the beautiful fall colors, and I walk around thinking, how sad you folks don't KNOW there's more to fall than that. The crisp clear days and cool nights. The smell of burning leaves. Darkness falling before suppertime. Hot chocolate. Trick or treating while wearing a winter coat underneath your costume. Picking apples in an orchard. Having your mom help you press red and orange maple leaves between pieces of wax paper.

But I'll decorate my apartment with the colors of fall. Maybe turn up the air conditioning, put on a sweater, and drink some hot chocolate. Buy some apples at the market and make a pie. Heck, I might even buy some crayons at Walmart. I'll make fall in Florida become autumn in New York.