Traffic crept cautiously on the slick pavement.  I buttoned two buttons on my vintage raincoat, against Portland’s first drenching rain in months, and watched an attractive blond slosh by.  Drenched to the skin, her skimpy summer dress and hot pink sandals looked incredibly inadequate.  Ws she freshly transplanted from sunny Florida?  Did she decide to ignore local weather predictions? 

As I hurried to beat a yellow light at the next intersection, I almost collided with an overstuffed gentleman clutching an orange-and pink-flowered umbrella.  His countenance prompted my presumption that he probably left a conservative black umbrella at the office last spring.  Grabbing his wife’s gaudy bumbershoot probably seemed the best of several unsatisfactory options that morning.  Like Alexander (in my granddaughter’s favorite book of the moment), Mr. Pink-and Orange-Umbrella seemed well on his way to a “horrible, no good, very bad day!” 

Many regard autumn as a time of reflection on the waning year, but from my perspective it becomes a time of beginnings.  Even though my children have long ago wrapped up their school years, my life continues to glue itself firmly to the academic year.  My late husband’s chosen profession of teaching, plus the onset of school's routines for my great-grandchildren, perpetuates my living in step with the scholastic cycles.  And if there is something about September that feels unfamiliar, the feeling is renewal.  The years we date from January, but is in September that we routinely open another file on our lives. 

Church and community groups resume their familiar patterns of meeting in September, and my kitchen calendar – the one sprinkled with Norman Rockwell paintings – fills to overflowing with scribbled reminders.  The unstructured, let-it-happen feel of summer is forgotten. 

While appreciating the return to reasonable order each September, I also delight in the seasonal changes:  the glorious shout of color from the sweet gum tree beside our driveway; the chickadees and purple finches discovering again the birdfeeder outside my bedroom window; the modified slant of the sun’s rays.  And soon the accumulation of leaves tracked inside the house will rival the piles outside. 

The smells of autumn probably stir my memories the most.  Recalling the almost forgotten pungence of burning leaves, I’m tempted to chew out (mentally, anyway) the D.E.Q. for not having a nostalgic bone in its governmental body! 

The kitchen aromas seem most vivid of all:  the ever-present pot of applesauce or apple butter simmering on the stove’s back burner; the sinus-reaming smell of pickles about to slide into jars; the fragrant heads of dill and the distinctive aroma of sun-ripened tomatoes fresh from the garden, destined for twenty-eleven kinds of tomato sauce/relish. 

I notice that my physical senses seem sharper in the autumn air, as I look back…and peer ahead.  I ponder the paradoxes of life, as I see more clearly both the dawn and the sunset of my experiences.  I examine again my inside cubbyholes.  In the September of our lives most of us find that the skin we hurriedly grew in younger years – to protect ourselves and to please others – no longer fits well. 

When September’s mellow song gentles my soul again, I find great comfort and reassurance in nature’s repeated refrain.  I’m aware of the fingerprint of God as it touches not only the burnished beauty of leaves and landscape but also as it encircles my entire year and imprints my life.