I’ve made no secret of the fact that I dislike fall. I just don’t see what all the fuss is about. So the leaves change color? They also fall to the ground where they change color again — to whatever color most aptly describes raking every day.
The weather is unapologetically capricious in the fall, declaring itself one thing as you’re getting dressed before reversing its decision entirely once you’re too far away from your closet to do anything about it. If you’ve ever glimpsed me at the grocery store in the late afternoon wearing rain boots and long underwear rolled above my knees, you can take solace in knowing that at least one thing in this fickle world is self-evident: It’s fall.
I am not sure of the origins of my apathy toward fall. It could stem from an early life spent in places where one season prevails throughout the year. Arizona upholds summer for 365 days while the Ozarks know only the season of humidity. Because of my physiological predilection for higher temperatures, I lack the constitution for the plummeting degrees that come with a Maine fall.
It’s only when I dare to peel away a wool scarf in August that the leaves start to twitch and the locals start praising God that the heat wave — of 70 degrees — finally has ended. They’re so relieved to retire the window air-conditioning units after running them for a few days; they can’t imagine a life spent trying to surreptitiously move into the mall where air conditioning — and samples of pork fried rice — are inalienable and free rights.
The worst part of fall is the continuous outings to orchards and farms. There’s something wholesome and virtuous about the maiden voyage into the crisp foliage. After that first visit, however, I’m ready to call it good on fall’s bounty. We return from each place, arms laden with things that will meet their demise on the counter, not by the edge of a knife or blaze of a pan, but by the steady and inescapable rot of neglect. I could bake enough crisps, crumbles and pies for all the world’s children and there would still be bags of fruit piled up in the corners of my kitchen. Only after I deposit our orchard remains to the woman in the neighborhood who spends all the daylight hours canning fall fruits and knitting sweaters for her cats can we return to eating foods that require forks rather than spoons.
It is that very first substantial meal that one of my children will wrest from his backpack a permission slip to visit — you’ll never guess — an orchard. I sign the form with a perfunctory scrawl that is loaded with “Please do not ask me to chaperone. Ask Billy’s dad even if he isn’t allowed within 100 yards of a school” subtext. By the end of the week, I’m chin-deep in a field littered with pumpkins and apples and kindergarteners. My child looks at me and asks, once again, “Can I get the biggest pumpkin here?” I begin to shake my head in protest when a gourd thrown by the boy who has been held back three times collides with the back of my skull. I smile meekly through my concussion and mutter, “Why not?”
I shell out $47.50 for the Great Pumpkin, which will assume its position in the shrine to fall idols that used to be our side porch. I clear out the oven, again, to start baking some fruit flesh. I ponder whether anyone has ever incorporated apples into enchiladas or lasagna. I wonder if I could just kick all the pumpkins off the porch and throw all the apples into the yard and start charging people to come to our orchard. While peeling, I contemplate where all the cowboys have gone, and by cowboys I mean derelicts who smash pumpkins against the blacktop because that seems the only way to reclaim a clear path to the door.
My eldest breaks my reverie, “Mom, I’m cold.”
“Why don’t you put on your jacket?”
“I think I left it at the orchard.”
Of course he did — because it was 20 degrees when we arrived at the orchard and 85 degrees when we left, not to mention the way one’s core temperature rises when attempting to hoist a pumpkin the size of the Hubble space telescope. We return to the orchard, where our omnipresence has inspired the owners to begin naming the llamas after members of our family. After finding the jacket in a bin, wound among other forgotten items of fall, I shepherd everyone back to the car, everyone but one. I am suddenly without one.
“Where is your sister?”
The other two stare at me, their eyes devoid of concern.
“She’s picking out an even bigger pumpkin than we got earlier.”
I scan the rows for a blonde head, but all I see are a pair of small legs straining to walk under the girth of a pumpkin so large that it surely has some kind of effect on the gravitational pull of the Earth. We require a wheelbarrow to get it to the back of the car. As we glide along a leaf-littered road, I glance into the rearview mirror to take stock of three little kids and one huge pumpkin.
That’s when I notice that only two are still wearing jackets.