Lemon Squares in the Loop

I had a small secret this Summer. Remember all those unseasonably brisk days we had early on? When the clouds obscured the sun on the East Coast for weeks on end and the temperature dwelled in the low sixties into early July? When it rained grey and claustrophobic day after dank day? I coveted each of those days. Just savored them. Maybe it's all that moody English blood I have in me. The few drops of Scottish. Or those morose Irish genes my grandmother left me. It's just in my nature to revel in murky days. Where's the nearest moor?

But now, having survived the miasma that was the rest of this Summer, I am in my glory: Autumn! The wind! The hues! The change! There’s a thickness, a different kind of adhesiveness to Fall that I love. It’s a season of bounty for those of us who tend toward the ruminative . It's a season of layers. Suffused with memory, it's Fall, I feel sure, that is the truest time of the year for beginnings and renewal.

Let me explain. It was my own erstwhile, early childhood school days that marked this season, not January, as the real beginning of each year for me. That permanent imprint of my own first days of school was what sealed it. Wearing pulled up knee socks and carefully chosen, thin-ribbed corduroy skirts, clogs from Thom McCann with a braid of leather that encircled the bridge of bones on top of my foot, I was a quiet, but sharp, observer in ribbon-encased barrettes. There were chalkboard- mornings and rolling-down-the-hill-home afternoons, kicking my way through the piles of leaves neighbors had raked into the street. The days were shortening each week further into the Fall and I ran faster to get home before the dark could catch me. These scenes play on a permanent loop in my mind every year, somehow getting more techno-color with every leaf-fall I live through. I look forward to hitting the play button every Autumn. That's how I know. Not from looking at the calendar tacked to the kitchen wall. Another year has started. Isn't it the same way for many of you?

Now, in my fortieth year, when the geese appear in the sky in their V, it’s as if, somehow, the fast forward button has been pushed. Another school year begins.The big yellow buses tug up the hill. Stop and pull away again. This time, spiriting away three children to the brick buildings a mile up and down the hills of our former hat factory town in the New England woods. This time, I have a new part to play: I am the mother in the story now. I wait at our worn wooden table to give them a soft landing when they tumble in the door, words, bodies and book bags falling over each other in their rush to be the first to reach me, to be the first to touch home. I am the mother now. Yes. But somewhere, I persist as the girl in ribbon barrettes. Each Fall, the loop rolls again. Except, it's playing on two tracks now. Renewal and memory, side by side.

Fall is the season for change and permanence in the garden too. I don't do much of anything but stay out of nature’s way out there in the Fall. Not in my live-and-let-live patch of earth. This is when Nature shows you its plain, working parts. I think this is when it's at its most beautiful, making every other part of the year feel like an overly done-up illusion. This is the real stuff. Now, we see plants begin to strip down. Fruits hang low and full. I love the colors. Not the bright pinks and yellows of summer for me. I’ll take the dark maroons, deep purples, dark greens, the browns.

I love the smells too. It’s as though the Earth is taking deep, satisfied sigh, after sigh. The smell of the dirt and leaves getting messily reacquainted after being kept apart for a year by the trees. That loamy musk! The apples in our backyard are on the ground and getting into the mix. At least, the ones the deer haven’t eaten. There are a few acorns in there too. Some rose hips. It’s the aroma of a wonderful decay. And then the Autumn wind stirs it all together. Some days, gently. Some days, hard. On especially quixotic afternoons, the gales of Fall blow right under the door of our somewhat sound, little house. Through the cracks in our cellar windows and in through the keyholes. Our foxhound lifts her nose to them. She sniffs at scent-stories travelling from the next hill over. The fox in the woods behind us. The dogs next door. The cider donuts at the mill two hills over. I smell other stories on those same currents.

My grandmother often flies on the Fall wind. For me, she does. I'll get glimpses of her around the turn in the road when a brightly lit yellow tree is just coming into view. There she is. She's improbably riding her bike down New Litchfield Street in her navy blue Keds and brown-rimmed plastic glasses. Waiting for me in her kitchen. White hair. Just so. Glass jar of collected matchbooks sitting on the dryer behind her. Open smile. Bright yellow teeth, but no one minds. Long skinny nose. Little blue eyes. Arms wide. Lord & Taylor costume jewels to match her blouse. Skinny belt to match her pumps. Missy, she says and squeezes me tight. Somewhere lemon squares are cooling in wax paper with dots of confectionery sugar popped on top. I can taste them just as plainly as I can see that tree. Memories travel easy like that on the Autumn wind.

That is Fall to me. It’s memory and it's beginnings. It’s both. Something old. Something new. It’s harvest time. Winter is coming. The children are at school. The dog and I both smell memories on the wind. For her, maybe it’s days in the fields of West Virginia, her home before she came to us. Chasing foxes across the field? Does the wind blow that far? This is the time for reaping what we’ve sown. For fruition. We think of Spring as a time for birth but truly fall is the time when things come into fullness. We plant in Spring. We pluck in Fall. I’ve been thinking about writing for so long. Just these little pieces. Thinking. Thinking. Not doing. This Fall, I finally began. I don't know what they'll yield. Maybe not much. A person's stories may not mean much to anyone but themselves. Maybe it's just between me, my dog, my not so-long-gone grandmother, the Fall breeze and a few lemon squares. But I’m chasing them down. My nose is to the wind. I’m running down the hill. I’m kicking up the leaves. This Fall, I’m harvesting some of those thoughts. Or I’m trying anyway. I’m chasing them down where they’ve been wheeling in the wind, lingering by the side of the road, and muttering beside my stone wall. It just seems like the right season to bring them home.