There are some rituals from childhood that make it impossible to shake them, no matter how old we are. There's the Secret Santa events, the summer break, the Easter egg hunt... and it seems autumn sets off a cascading effect of nostalgia.
I may be a bit nerdy, but there was something about back to school shopping in August that got me all worked up with excitement. There were sweaters that meant the weather would finally cool. There were new pencils yet to be sharpened and notebooks never written in. Each school year meant a new beginning. This year, I'd promise myself, I'd make the best grades ever, I'd make new friends, the boy I had a crush on might talk to me....
After a summer of heat, fall seemed to bring a new beginning. The leaves shed themselves after a long productive season and with that I would phase out the girl from fifth grade to the pre-adolescent of sixth grade.
Fall season also meant some fun times and yummy treats. The smell of distant woodsmoke, the wood pile, the piles of leaves, my cold runny nose, puffy clouds, long lines of birds flying south....
As school got into full swing, there would be the event kids plotted for since early September - the Halloween parade. You know, the day in school when we got to go to school in costumes and parade up and down the hallways being anyone but who we were. Shy kids became brave. And that infamous night - plundering until almost midnight with an ambitious pillowcase to parts of the neighborhood our parents didn't know we visited. The scary tales and movies. The plotting with friends which path to take through the suburbs....
The sound of football games on home tvs. The bonfires, smores and hot dogs. The shorter days and longer nights. The warm blanket. The fireplace. The hot chili and the soothing hot chocolate. The anticipation of potential early snowfall....
Thanksgiving arrived with strangers and relatives, a packed house. The smell of turkey cooking making my stomach growl. It became the holiday that was the precursor of...Christmas!
To many spiritual practices, the harvest and the falling leaves were signs of the dark season, the end of life until springtime. Yet, for most kids, it's really the beginning of going out, exploring, playing in leaf piles, sledding. Nature may be going into dormancy, but kids are just coming out to be the first ones to walk in a new snow, to get paid to rake leaves, to blow their exhale just to see the fog it created.
Three holidays in a row - October - November - December. And, then there's the time off school.
There's no reason not to engage in nostalgic practices in the fall. In fact, there's a way to make the adult version less childish and yet equally potent!
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