In the Fall

Well, the first eight and a half months of 2008 were a blogging bust. I am okay with that.
The time was there, through the depths of winter, but my mind was not. There were books, there was sledding, there was the (thankfully unpublished) navel-gazing of my SAD.

In spring, well- I don't particularly remember spring, but I suspect my attention was on the signs of summer- and now, having summered here, I know not to anxiously anticipate summer (unless I anxiously anticipate it with something akin to dread). By the beginning of July I was wishing the whole of the season away, longing for fall, with its few weeks of sanity.

And here it is.

And the light is clear.
And the air is chilly, a light slap to the senses reminding you to attend to this, the shortest and sweetest of the seasons.

It is good to be home. Work called me away for the week. I was going to stay an extra night off, but found I just couldn't. Homesickness? A bit, yes. A Fellow's spidey-sense that there's a comp plan meeting she hadn't been informed of, but was expected at... Seven o'clock? Tonight? Sure. So yes, there may have been a bit of that too. At any rate, it was good to get on the boat in the sharp, pure light of afternoon. I didn't even mind the large crop of people out for the weekend, each with their own substantial freight. It was even nice to have demands made of my time, so that my Friday night would not be at loose ends, spent wondering what my rush was- why I felt such a pull to a place I've only been for a year.

But in a year, I had the knowledge to stay away from the flatbed to the right of the parking lot ("don't go there: you-know-who's got a Hustler he's waving around"); I got a sunny smile from the eyes of a quiet guy; when I carried a box about equal to my own volume up the dock, a man in a summer hat pointed out to his woman in khakis "now there's a Maine girl for you," a stereotype I am happy to fill (as they were filling theirs) if they just make comments and don't ask for pictures; the gears in my car shifted sweetly as I drove from the landing; though my driveway is still canyoned by a wash-out I know I can get to it tomorrow. I even created a little IAH traffic jam in the street when someone stopped me to talk.

I am home, and it is fall.

And there is no prettier sentence than that.