With all due respect to summer, which I love, fall is the best season.

Summer is the season of youth. A time of sunlight sparkling on the water and sweet, dripping popsicles. We fill those long, bright hours with my family in constant motion, days melting into each other, blissfully unable to distinguish a Tuesday from a Thursday.

All lovely things but entirely exhausting. Nostalgic

When the weather cools in September, I’m sad for a minute until I take a moment to pause in the cool morning air, and I’m relieved. The kids go back to school and while I miss them, getting back into weekly routines is good for all of us. There are sweaters to wear without needing extra layers. Beverages are warm, and boots come out of the closet.

October arrives and leaves turn, there’s football to watch, popsicles give way to pumpkin, and I’m here for it. Halloween decorations, at least the way we do them, are more adorable than gory, and my kids come home with more candy than they can eat (anyway, that’s what I tell myself while raiding their bags after bedtime for a spare 100 Grand bar or two).

We have a slew of family birthdays and of course, Thanksgiving in November, so this month is full of food and family, two of my favorite things. Embarrassingly, I keep a Pinterest board of ideas for birthday cakes and Thanksgiving dishes – a new buttercream, a variation on pecan pie, an interesting spice rub for turkey, a creative way to fold napkins. It’s been a few years since we could celebrate these moments with extended family, and I’m that tradition returns this year. Regardless, November feels like a cozy sweater, soft and comfortable and ready for a nap.

When I was younger, I dreaded fall. It felt like the beginning of the end. A season when color and light fade, warmth gives way to coolness, and we slow down in anticipation of the glacial pace of winter looming ahead. Why would anyone prefer darkness to light, cold to hot, slow to fast?

Perhaps it was because I feared growing old as if slowing down would allow it to catch me. Tom Petty said, “If you never slow down, you never grow old,” for a reason.

Now I see the other side. I understand the power of a classic black dress, a sharp dark suit. The comfort of a steaming mug of coffee outweighs a lukewarm glass of anything. And while I’m often in perpetual motion of body and mind, I’ve come to embrace opportunities to slow down (25-year-old me would roll her eyes) and be still. Sometimes I get nostalgic for summer and the days when my own colors were brighter, and I moved with ease and speed that I took for granted.

Those memories are precious and important, like flickering light on water; they are less brilliant in hindsight, and I wouldn’t trade any future autumn days to relive any from the past.

The young can keep summer’s frenetic pace. I’m happy to partake in its energetic joy, but fall is more honest and sustainable. You can live in the fall for a long time, with all its cracks and flaws, warm and safe and surrounded by friends and family.

And hopefully, a big slice of pecan pie.

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This essay also appeared in the October 2022 issue of FLM - Fete Lifestyle Magazine.