Fall has always been my favorite time of year. Even as a kid, I knew that it forebode the long school year ahead and the distance from that point to the lazy days of summer. Jennifer cooked chili yesterday, and Aubrey made cornbread which has become a sort of ritual for us in the fall. We will eat chili at least once a week this time of year. Starting today football is on every weekend until next year which for a Blue Devil/Panther’s fan can both make or break your weekend. Last fall was a major life event for me. I spent most of my weekends, and some days of the week traveling with my sister back and forth to Roanoke to visit my mother in the hospital. I have every right to hate fall as it brings up some feelings that are better left in the past. Somehow, I believe that it happened this way for a reason. Maybe that’s how mom wanted it? Fall is supposed to be about homecoming. Maybe she wanted me to remember this time of year is about family, and being together. Not just for the good times. We need to be there for each other through both good and bad. It’s easy to attribute everyday things like life and death with the song on the radio or the rain— because we all want to find some type of cosmic significance to our lives.
When I was just a child, I remember the little white row house that my sister, my mom, and me lived in on Raleigh Street in Martinsburg, West Virginia. I was a young no-nothing that had a middling sense of self, zero fear of mortality, and there was nothing to me as cool as my dad. I had this vivid imagination of what he was doing at any given time. I told people that he flew planes, and helicopters—everything… I watched movies, movies that I probably shouldn’t have watched as an eight year-old but I did. Movies like Top Gun and Iron Eagle, and I lived vicariously through these characters and thought my dad was probably
In our days of innocence we were entrusted with our own safety at times. At least that is how I remember it. I can remember
autumn days sitting on the porch, playing in the back yard with my sister and the neighbor kids while we all waited for mom to come home from her graduate school classes. Here she was, raising two kids and going to school in the evening after working all day. Even though, I can’t imagine allowing my daughter to watch her siblings for a few hours. As a kid, it was pretty neat. I remember we would be home alone for a couple of hours while mom was at class, I think one of the neighbors would look in on us to make sure we were still alive. We had to stay in the house or the back yard. When it was dark or raining, we had to entertain ourselves. We would watch movies we had recorded on VHS tapes from HBO. We would watch a rotation of all the 80’s classics which provided my sister and I a rich education in 80’s culture and cool. We loved those movies, and even today can share a random quote from one of them and smile knowingly. Our little house was small, and had many problems. I remember we used to crack the window to get the fall air to circulate through the house. I always loved the cool air of fall, and the change of colors on the trees. I used to roam the block when mom was home. We would walk everywhere. To the grocery store. To the arcade. I used to blow my whole thirty-dollar paycheck, from delivering a local buyers-guide door to door, at the arcade and local deli. It’s long gone now, and replaced by some other business. If my mom knew of some of the crazy things I used to do as a kid, she wouldn’t have been happy about it. I was insulated by the ignorance of youth and the always safe place to land at home. I remember mom would put so much effort into trying to cook these great meals for my sister and me. Like most kids, we had our favorites but she insisted that we have a more advanced palette. Some meals were notably not for me then and maybe even now, but most were good. Now that I am older, and feeling much older lately, I can’t help but try to define home. I want a place where my kids can come back to, and show their kids, and share the fond memories of childhood. I don’t have that really. I don’t have a place to call home. There’s so many great quotes filled with beautiful words to describe home not being a physical place but an emotional one. I find some solace in that because it’s familiar. My mom was always home to me. Even though I had this picture of what life should be like as a kid, and how much I wanted to be my father or even someone else on any given day. I remember being jealous of some kids that had more, and got to do more as a child and not knowing the great fortune that I had at the time in having the love of my mother.
