Autumn is Around the Corner

I have always loved Autumn. I think it goes back to the magic of having my grandparents rake the leaves in their yard. They would rake them against the white picket fence with the rose trellis. My brother Jimmy and I would dive into the piles and roll around. It was sheer heaven. I even remember the smell of them. In my childhood movies that scene was captured one year. I was wearing a faux red leather jacket and wearing my red cowgirl boots. One of my favorite outfits of all time. My brother had a black jacket and black boots. When we got down rolling around in the mountain of leaves my Grandaddy would rake them back together and scoop them up for burning in a metal barrel. Oh the smell of the burning leaves. Now that is illegal. We would go into the house and have some of my grandmother's homemade (NEVER store bought) cookies and cocoa that was made in a pan on the stove. No instant anything for her. Life was grand. I would think about the wonderful holidays that would soon be here. Halloween, Thanksgiving and soon after that Christmas. At night I would open my window to catch a breath of the crisp Fall air. Oh how I love it still.

Sometimes I wish I could be that person for just a few minutes. The person whose entire life was yet to happen. All the promise of a future not yet determined. At this point my father was still stationed in the Navy and we lived most of those years at my grandmother's. It was heaven. We were so cramped in her two bedroom home. My mother was sharing a bedroom with her younger sister who still lived home for part of that time. My brother and I shared a sofa that became a bed. Sometime during the year I was four my mother became pregnant and my father began to build our own house around the corner. I started kindergarten from that house. The following year I got my baby sister. Five short years later my father got a job in New York and we moved to New Jersey. While I saw my grandparents many times after that, and spent some weeks with them during the summer, I always missed being able to walk to their house. Now my grandmother is a four hour drive and my life is so hectic that I haven't been there for years. Today I am feeling badly about that. I simply must go this Fall and maybe I can rake her leaves and have one last dive. See, you really can go home again.....at least for awhile longer.