It is Fall

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” – Albert Camus

“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.” – John Donne

Today is the first full day of fall.  I love this season.  I know so many people who say that autumn is their favorite season.  I live in Florida, but I grew up in Pennsylvania and I went to college in Virginia.  Both of those states admittedly have much prettier fall leaves than what we get in Florida.  Still, even Florida has its change of seasons.  My house has a lake behind it and behind that is a nature preserve.  In the fall, the light of the sun is finally able to poke through the preserve’s thick wall of trees and brush, hinting at the light that lives inside all of existence.  The Japanese people call this beautiful sight of “sunshine filtering through leaves”, komorebi.  I’m surprised that we English speakers don’t have just one word for that phenomenon because it is so lovely to behold.

“I love autumn, the season of the year that God seemed to have just put there for the beauty of it.” – Lee Maynard

When my son was on a travel soccer team trip a few years ago, we headed up north for a soccer tournament and one of the mothers, a native Floridian asked me timidly if I thought that it would be okay for her to bring back some colored leaves.  I said, “Honey, they will give you as many Hefty bags as you want.”  I remember the hours spent raking up the beautiful leaves in all of their splendor.  I remember all of the different school assignments and crafts involving the lovely leaves.  For some reason, those chores and assignments never seemed as agonizing as picking up fallen apples covered in bees in the summer or shoveling snow in the winter.  There is just something so comforting in all things relating to fall.  The gorgeous colored leaves, pumpkins, pumpkin spice, Halloween and Thanksgiving, swirling light winds, back to school, the start of football season, light sweaters and throws, etc. are all things of autumn and things that are almost universally appreciated.

“Autumn is the mellow season and what we lose in flowers, we more than gain in fruits.” – Samuel Butler

Second Halfers, we are autumn.  We have gone through the spring of our childhoods and the summer of becoming an adult.  We are in our full-color prime, bearing the fruits of who we really are and showing the world the beauty of the banquet of what we have to give.  We are calmer than in our previous seasons.  Our colors don’t necessarily burst, but our colors are vivid and show all that we have lived through and experienced, making our season’s colors the most beautiful of all – the colors that all of the world celebrates.  How blessed we are to be in this lovely season of our lives!

“Fall has always been my favorite season.  The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature has been saving all year for the grand finale.” – Lauren Destefano