Autumn calling

That's it. Summer, I've had it with you. The kids have already returned to school, so why are you still sticking around? It's time for autumn! In the parks up in the hills, many leaves cover the ground so I can make-believe that autumn has arrived, but the temperature is still too warm to really imagine it.

I don't care for Halloween, but I do love autumn. It's calling me by name. Every year about this time I start to get fidgety for autumn to come. The chill in the air, the pumpkin spice, the misty mornings, the scarves! Oh, how I love everything about autumn. I've always been an autumn person. Sure, I used to say spring was my favorite season, but that's because my birthday is the first day of spring. In reality, while beautiful, I like spring less because it means summer is coming. Bleh. Summer. Never liked it.

To me, summer was a depressing string of endlessly sunny, hot, boring days. I grew up in California's Central Valley, home to the most oppressive heat one can conjure. It wasn't a clean, dry heat so much like Arizona desert heat, although it is desert of a kind. It was a dirty, smoggy heat; the particles of pollution would expand in the heat and Spare the Air days would become Don't Go Outside days.

 By contrast, we had fog delays in winter, which were just wonderful for us school children, not having to go to school until 10 a.m. But autumn still was the best. It meant a return from the doldrums of summer to the vitality of school and regular life. I loved getting my school supplies, sometimes new shoes, and just knowing that the heat was about to end was a thrill.

These days, autumn is marred by wildfires up and down the state. It saddens me that climate change has done this to us. Well, we have done this to ourselves, seeing as climate change is human-made. Less autumn rain means fire danger. Even our winters have been relatively dry. I hear there are fewer fog delays in the valley nowadays. Still, autumn is better than summer, if nothing else but for the shorter days. I've always been a fan of an early sunset.

I really, really, don't care for Halloween. I had a traumatic psychotic experience last year on Halloween, and the holiday can go to heck for all I care. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving at our house, but sometimes we visit family on Thanksgiving. The giving of thanks isn't what we oppose, but the historical basis of the holiday, during which European settlers were saved (so the story goes) by the very peoples they would nearly wipe out. I am all for renaming Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples Day. It is already so named in various parts of California, including where I live.

I cheer on the end of summer, and pray that we get a good, rainy, chilly autumn this year. Amen.