Glee, hot chocolate, football, and why I love (and miss) Fall.

It’s almost officially Fall. Glee‘s new season starts next week! ACs across the country or being switched to the off positions. And it will soon be apple picking time.

I love the seasons. As much as I’m a summer girl, my insides get all giddy at the thought of hot chocolate and sweatshirts at high school football games (which, being in youth ministry, I’ve never stopped going to for the past 14 years post high school). I love walks in crispy air and the crunchy bright leaves of Pennsylvania. I love that first morning post summer when the air is cool and you need a blanket to walk down the hall to the kitchen for a warm cup of coffee. I love the hope of the beginning of the school year, and with it, the first Young Life Club. I love October sunny days with a high of 65. And I love wearing socks for the first time in what feels like months.

Of course, it’s not Fall here. It’s the same as it was last month in San Francisco, except more sunshine than clouds lately, which I’m thankful for. But I can’t tell you how much I’m appreciating the seasons I used to know now that I’ve made it through a year of the relentless seasonlessness of this beautiful city. Today, as I read a story to August that involved a snowstorm, he said: “I don’t know ‘snowstorm.'” So I pulled out the computer and showed him photos of his babyhood in the wintery stuff. And I felt sorry for the boy. He deserves some early experiences with the joy of changing seasons. He deserves the refreshing hope of that change, the longing for a cooling down or warming up, a visual reminder that time is moving and we are part of its change.

So, I’ll daydream about the leaves in the hiking trail behind our house in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. And I’ll try to be grateful for another day of jeans and a cardigan. There is so much beauty to be found in this city. I just needed to miss the world I came from for a second.

What about you? What do you love most about Fall?