Seasons

I am missing the Northwest in the fall.

It has been teasingly cool here- a super pleasant sixty degrees in the mornings and eveningtimes. So cold I even grabbed a hoodie to wear as we sat outside for dinner at Bacchanal, listening to Los Po-Boysitos. The humidity has seriously lessened and those dawn and dusk times when I am most likely to be outside are even verging on "crisp."

But still, it doesn't really feel like fall.

I still can wear sandals all day. ("Ms. Craven- in the morning when you coming to school, don't your feet be cold?!") The afternoons still get up to the mid-eighties and my jeans and rust-colored-sweater become ironic. It's October- right now we use our overhead fans in the afternoons, but no air conditioning or heat.

In Bellingham, at the Grant Street House, we didn't have heat until October and we were essentially incapacitated by the cold. I remember trying to study, but being so overcome by shivers I would go downstairs to Tara's room, where she was in bed, in pants, long-sleeves, fleece, and hat--- the same thing having happened to her.

I know I should be thankful for this tepid weather. It's one thing I always craved during the long cold months back home. But now I guess I so deeply associate cold weather with home, that I'm longing for it because this little hint of it here is reminding me of how different it is in Washington.

The Evergreen State's not known for its brightly changing leaves- but it does have trees that do that. Stuck among the evergreens like band nerds at a football party, a few deciduous guys turn gold, orange, and red before crispy and brown when the leaves get just too cold and the trees shake them all off.

Here we have banana trees (we have banana trees!) with giant purple blossoms that hang down like dinosaur tongues. We have jasmine and gardenias and papaya trees, "elephant ears" with leaves big enough for a small child to wrap themselves up in like a sleeping bag. All these bowl me over regularly with their enormous, tropical beauty. But right now, in mid-October, knowing that I won't be able to visit the PNW for a dry-ice-crisp December, all I'm craving is the smell of cold pine-needles, mugs of chai tea held in un-numbing red hands, scarves and sweaters and jackets layered as shields from Bellingham's whipping wind.

(I also woke up half-dreaming of Cow-Chip Cookies in Seattle. Maybe that part's more the pregnancy.)

Now I'm going to layer up New Orleans-style: jeans, t-shirt, and exposed feet, for a walk to the park to see some men play Japanese drums.

Send me a cold day mostly spent in a coffee shop, WA, if you have an extra laying around.

xoxo