Falling for Fall

I have always been a summer girlie.  I love the slow down to enjoy yourself, sit with a book, toes in the sand, laid back vibe that comes with coconut scents and permission to eat ice cream more often.  As the summer progresses and hits the mid August place and the sun begins to sit a little lower in the sky a little earlier each day I find myself grappling with 2 hands to hold on as other people in my home get excited about pumpkin spice arriving earlier and earlier each year.

This past year was no different at first…You see I live in the mid-Atlantic coastal region of the U.S. and because of that, I can become a little spoiled.  Some years it is early March and I am already ordering iced beverages and soaking up vitamin D outside on the patio in a tee-shirt and capri pants.  I have even gone Christmas shopping wearing shorts in December sipping my holiday drink in the iced form to stay cool in the stores.  Other years I’m bundled until late April and wearing hats and gloves clutching a hot Chestnut Praline to stay warm in late November.

Because the weather here can be so unpredictable from year to year, I never know which version of each season I will get, so I was very excited for the early Spring and beautiful weather all the way through to late July.  Then August came in and brought with it the most hot and humid weather I can remember in a very long time.  And although I am used to humidity and heat, my perimenopausal body was not prepared for just how long this season of summer would last.

It stretched past the opening day of pumpkin spice season at Dunkin and later Starbucks.  It continued well into decorating for fall and lasted into Christmas merchandise being loaded onto shelves.  We didn’t see any relief until the very last week of September, and even then, the humidity and heat returned. As I sit here at the beginning of October trying to be grateful for an unusually long stretch of warm weather, I find myself confused instead.

As much as I enjoy the season of tank tops and sandals, I am longing to wear sweaters and fluffy socks.  It is a strange thing to decorate your home for Halloween in a bathing suit while getting catalogs for winter clothes in the mail.  So I sit here feeling my transplanted inner New England body feeling for areas of the world where it is normal to not have a more definitive temperature and atmospheric change to their seasons.

Having grown up associating colors and weather with the passing of time in each cycle, I realize how much I have taken for granted that it would always be the case.  Last year as I failed to experience summer in the ways I usually had, I would have relished the idea of it lasting on and on.  I also forgot to nest last winter and stayed pretty busy in the hibernating months, so imagining that I would have an extension of outdoor time cutting into my cozy couch cuddling blanket days with my pups this Autumn baffles me.

I guess my point is that without the cycles of nature moving through their natural states, how do we, as humans, adapt to the cycles we are supposed to go through each year. Should we just go with the flow being present each day as it shows up, or should we start making the soup that should be replacing the salads and celebrating the season even though the weather doesn’t match?

My spiritual side knows I can only control how I show up.  So I have decided to try and do both.  I can be present and appreciate the extra time outdoors in my shorts and tanks, and I can put the pumpkin on the porch and binge watch Gilmore Girls sipping an Iced Chai.  I can jog the pool after walking the dogs and color fall pictures by scented candles after dinner.  I can even write this while curled up on the couch with the dogs and the air conditioner watching fall ambiance videos on the television.

This season I have learned my lesson about trying to hold onto the summer past it’s time.  I sincerely hope all this heat isn’t an indication of a trend to come annually.   I am learning to embrace the season of changing colors and warm apples (a flavor I much prefer), for what it was truly intended for, a marker that some things are meant to be left behind knowing that they will return…in their own due time.