Summer's End

Fall is creeping in.  I can feel it in the crisp nights and the sunny days.  At one point in my life I thought Fall would no longer feel like the start of the year.  I thought as I finished school and entered the workforce there would be a separation.  And then I became a teacher, and autumn is forever linked with the smell of new paper and the start of the year. 

Maybe that is why I love Fall.  It is a hopeful time, new students, new schedule and a bright new slate.   I also adore the weather of Fall.  The brightness of the air as the coolness washes over the land, the change of the leaves.  There is something special about waking up and seeing frosted grass, knowing that now the  blades of grass are like green icicles, fragile and dagger like, but as soon as the sun hits it they will be back, fresh, slightly wilted but still tickly beneath bare feet. 

For 3 years I missed Fall.  It does not exist in Southern California.  It skips from summer to winter like a scratch on a CD, one moment you are in your bathing suit on the beach, the next it is cool and you have to wear a sweater--frigid I know.   Here in Turkey it is unfamiliar, yet still the same.  Fall is here, like an old friend in a new country.