Love Fall

A number of colleagues have recently told me they’re sad to see that fall is clearly beginning. “It means winter is coming,” they’ve all said with a disappointed and resigned tones.

It’s such a strange thing to me, the idea that fall could symbolize something sad. Fall is a time of wonder and promise to me. The air turns crisp, the leaves turn color, and it feels like something magical is afoot. For the Jewish people, fall is the beginning of the year. We celebrate the creation of the entire world at the time when the harvest comes and the air begins to cool.

I grew up in Hawaii and California; a charmed life I’m sure it sounds like. And in many respects it was, but not in terms of weather. As a young child in Hawaii, I listened to my mother groan and whine at the constantly warm and humid air. She desperately missed her family and her home in the San Francisco Bay Area, but this was often expressed as complaints about the weather. She was so uncomfortable all the time, she would tell me. To this day, I associate so much badness in my own life and in the world with heat and humidity.

As a child in Hawaii and then California, I read about seasons. We of course learned about them in school. But these simple lessons had nothing to do with what was happening outside. The leaves didn’t turn, the flowers didn’t pop, snow never came. I like to tell people that in California there are two seasons: Rain and No Rain. It rains in the winter and hardly ever rains in the summer. In fact, the summers in California are brown as all the grass dies without the rain. The lush greenery comes in the winter. So really my experience with seasons was nearly opposite what we read in the storybooks.

In 2007, my husband and I drove a bright yellow moving van across the country. Bringing our most precious belongings (and a lot of yet-to-be-built Ikea furniture) to begin our new lives in New Jersey and New York. We took a circuitous route, stopping in Aspen, Mt. Rushmore, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia along the way to visit friends, family, and sites. And the first strange thing we noticed as we left the west: it rains in the summer. How incredible! Have you ever heard of anything so strange? Well of course you have because it rains in the summer all over the world. But not in California where the summer season is what I call, No Rain.

And soon after we arrived, another miracle occurred: trees turned into vivid displays – pieces of art all their own. Sometimes the leaves would be so vivid I almost felt the need to squint just to look at them. Trees changing color! Who could imagine such miracles?

And the miraculous events kept coming. In winter, white fluffy snow fell from the sky and dampened the sound throughout the city. In spring, flowers, seemingly from nowhere, popped up all over previously barren trees. Suddenly stark naked trees became pink, purple, red, and – my favorite – white.

Today we live in suburban Philadelphia and I hear disbelief from nearly everyone who hears my story. Something like, “You left California for here?!” Oh yes indeed. To me, Philadelphia is a magical wonderland. Things I had once believed only occurred in storybooks happen here every few months.

Fall feels like the beginning of that magic. Cool breezes flow through, leaves change and fall to the ground, and I feel like creation has begun all over again. Peaches and plums lose flavor; apples and grapes taste like candy. Sometimes, when I’m lucky, I catch a foliage scene in the middle of my commute that is so vivid, so intense, that I can barely look without squinting. Just when I thought I was tired, cynical, lost, everything changes. My heart screams, “Wow.”

And the whole world begins anew. Again.