I’m Falling

Get it? Falling?
I woke up this morning about 6:50, ten minutes before the alarm went off. The coolness of the sheets and the darkness still outside brought me full into fall. When I think of fall, I am brought back to my childhood days in the local public school…I think of sharpening my pencil in the old fashioned hand cranked sharpener mounted to the wall over the trash can in the junior high, with loud crickets chirping in the corners of the room. When autumn comes, I think of fresh school supplies, new teachers, and that butterfly feeling in my stomach brought on by the newness of the first weeks of school. Of course I’m old and we actually started school in the fall back in the old days!

I also remember walking a half block to the bus stop from my Grandma’s house (the same house where I live now!) where we stayed in the mornings when my mom went to work at the local Haggar Slack factory, long since closed. In front of what used to be the Old South Ward School, my cousin and I waited for the bus while neighborhood kids threw horse apples at each other, splattering those huge balls of green-yellow goo on the crooked old sidewalks. I never knew what these kids from “across the tracks” would do, so I was always a little nervous about those cold mornings.

My mom went to work really early and brought us still in our PJs to my Grandma’s. My cousins came, too, since their mom worked at the same factory at the time. We’d wake up in the bedroom with the double bed with pastel print sheets and the old white alarm clock with the orange numbers that actually flipped over (pre-digital?). Believe it or not, I sleep in the same exact location now! This room has no real piece of carpet but instead is covered with scores of brightly colored mismatched carpet squares! Some are even original shag! Very groovy! Anyway, Grandma would feed and dress us, and her house always smelled of coffee! I love coffee because of my Grandma!

I love it when life brings out a memory from the grab bag of childhood recollections! None of the above notions have anything to do with fall except maybe the crickets, but my mind will forever associate them together. What memories are we making for our husbands and kids? Of course, we all try to make “on purpose” memories, but what day-to-day-I-love-the-smell-of-coffee-because-it-reminds-me-of-Grandma memories are we making?

I'd love to hear memories of your childhood falls (that doesn't quite sound right, does it?) or of the memories you're making now with the ones you love!