Every year I wait for the crisp.
I wait for it... searching the sky for crisp, checking the weather for crisp, smelling the pumpkin coffees for crisp.
Nothing else replaces the crisp.
The front shelves are cleared first, nakedly exposed, waiting for their wigs and makeup, for their costumes and masks.
Then the pumpkins arrive: those huge orange thumpers. They pile up together as though they are children at a slumber party, waiting for the ghost stories to begin.
Football starts. Pads crunch together. Girls in houndstooth dresses and crimson heels smile together for photos.
Apples and cinnamon, and pumpkins once more, invite themselves to the Sunday covered dish.
Leaves fall and with a satisfying sound crumble under my feet, a long walk on organic bubble wrap.
Still I wait for the crisp.
The rain comes-- achingly slowly-- and replaces the hot Southern soaring temperatures with ever so slightly cooler ones, one. degree. at. a. time.
The Fair turns up. Subtly, powdered sugar and melted caramel and hay mingle with di-ding-ding-di-ding and whooshing wind of spinning swings.
The plastic tubs march down from the attic, purging themselves of scratchy wool, of soft scarves, or decades-old sweat shirts with their lullabye smells.
And I wait for the crisp.
The crisp will come--long awaited, like an celebrity, like a relative, arriving "fashionably late," knowing she is waited for, knowing she is anticipated, knowing she can start the party.
The crisp will come, and I will want so badly to breathe it in slowly, to savor my reward for my long wait. The crisp will laugh--as it stings my nose like an astringent, as it flies by in a brisk walk-- with a laugh like the snap of an apple. It will bring the real autumn in a rucksack, and cleverly drop it when I'm not looking, while I'm distracted by it's spectacle.
Then it will be gone-- leaving me to wait for waiting once more.
Join me every day in October for NaBloPoMo and 31 Days of Fall. See all the posts for 31 Days of Fall here.
I too am waiting for the crisp!
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