Seasons change. Winter comes and summer goes.
Through counseling, I’ve learned that seasons of life come and go, too. The season I was in even just ten years ago is far different from the time and place I’m in now. Nothing stays too constant for too long.
I’ve lived in North Dakota all my life. Where the saying is, “Don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes for it to change.” A place where we consistently enjoy four distinct seasons.
Currently, we’re in the: It’s cool in the morning, so grab a sweater, but you’ll take it off by noon, and it’s not quite dim on our way to school, but, very, very soon, we’ll be getting up and coming home to blackness, and turn the air on in the afternoon, because it’s almost ninety out, to open the windows after dinner for cool air, season.
In Bismarck, North Dakota, and all over the US, we are finally entering the fall season.
Fall has really come to be the most popular girl in the class. People want to share her photos, imitate the way she dresses, drink her same coffees, and go to her places. I don’t know if it’s the hipness of pumpkin, the monetizing of pumpkin patches, or that social media has allowed people to realize that we’re all on the same page of adoration, but it now seems universally true: fall is to be favored. And waited for with anticipation.
As a kid, I remember once being on a walk with my mom, on our long-stretching gravel roads, amidst the vast prairie. It was either summer or early fall. I think the former. I asked her what her favorite season was. I told her mine was summer (or maybe winter, because kids think that way [and Christmas aids in the sweetness]). She told me her favorite season was fall. And honest to God, as we walked along that dusty, red road, I thought that was a weird answer.
She was right in her sentiments. Maybe even a trend setter. Fall is now everyone’s favorite. They feel most alive in their cozy sweaters. Scarves. The coat that gets just a bit longer. There are apples, pumpkin spice, and everything nice. Brightly colored falling leaves, harvest, and all the back-to-school photos. The ones where the size of the kids’ smiles almost match their seemingly way too big feet in new shoes. The sweatshirts that say “football” and “thankful.” There’s Friday night lights, small courts of kings and queens, and bikes just waiting to be pedaled all weekend. And sunflowers. In fields, in prairies, growing tall in backyards.
There are browns. Oranges. Yellows. And wilting pink and red flowers in pots.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good pumpkin spiced iced. And I enjoy that memorable trip to Papa’s Pumpkin Patch for pictures and finding the perfect one to carve. But I have to wait for it. I don’t long for it. I savor every last second of burning sun and shorts, until I know I truly can’t keep it any longer. Seven years in the coldest place on earth, Grand Forks, home of the University of North Dakota, taught me you don’t ever rush those final warm days. You cling to them. And cherish them until it’s too dark to continue.
Fall to me is much more than Starbucks, cozy sweats, and medium-weight jackets. Fall to me is nostalgia. It is smell and it is music. Fall will forever take me back to August. When the sun sits just a little lower and doesn’t seem to shine quite as bright. Where I can always feel that anticipation of a new school year. I can smell the crinkling grass and the fields. And the sunflowers.
Fall is my dusty road on the school bus. Or my brother and I driving to the first two weeks of football and basketball practice. Where for fourteen days, we did doubles. Fall is IcyHot on sore legs. It’s pictures using film in small towns around our region. It’s warmup jerseys and the nasty odor of football gear, because the visiting team gets stuck in the boys locker room. It’s pregame dancing.
In my heart, the season of girls basketball will always be in the fall. With the aroma of freshly cut wheat and dry afternoons. And sunflowers. When the afternoon heat in the school is palpable. And the gymnasium floor has a like-new scent.
It’s the music of the summer, that carries on just a few more months. It’s the hit song on repeat in your car as you begin geometry or the download on your computer when you take new steps on a bustling college campus. It’s the first day of high school where you’re dressed up in a skirt for a game that night, and the first day of Geology 101, where you sit by Matt, whom you met at orientation. It’s waking up to that song on the radio and knowing you’re in a new place. That smells like cool morning air, busy quads, and parties. And sunflowers.
It’s walking into your new job, knowing you passed the bar and that all of life is ahead. It’s streaming James Taylor, Harry Chapin, Jim Croce, and Simon and Garfunkel as the leaves change from green to yellow, yellow to red, alive to dead. It’s the black rain jacket that was new then, that you still have now. It’s the continued aroma of a new start.
Fall to me will endlessly be a smell. And a song.
Mom was right then and now. Fall is a season of favorites. The season to be favored. It’s my favorite season.
Enjoy your days. And make sure you find time to stop and smell the sunflowers.
Luv, jackie
“Something about her was familiar
I could swear I'd seen her face before
But she said, ‘I'm sure you're mistaken’
And she didn't say anything more
“You see she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly
She took off to find the footlights
And I took off to find the sky
“You see she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly
She took off to find the footlights
And I took off for the sky
And here, she's acting happy
Inside her handsome home
And me, I'm flying in my taxi
Taking tips (And getting stoned!)” ~ Taxi by Harry Chapin
Photos:
Sunflower photo: One of my favorites. Taken in August 2007, at our old farm, with Sean and Mom and Dad as we were out for a drive to look at crops.
Wheat photo: Mom and I in Dad's wheat field.
Basketball: Circa Aug or Sept 1999, in Buffalo, SD.
Me: Oct 1, 2024, National Pumpkin Spice Day.
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/ / The JM Stebbins blog is an autoimmune encephalitis blog from former lawyer and autoimmune encephalitis survivor, Jackie M. Stebbins.
Jackie M. Stebbins is also the author of Unwillable: A Journey to Reclaim my Brain, a book about autoimmune encephalitis, resilience, hope, and survival. / /