Is fall as good as it gets?
October in New York is peak happiness
In October we flew to New York again. This time we brought Leo, which meant we also brought an overflowing tote bag packed with snacks, coloring books, stickers, a mini pair of blue headphones and a matching tablet downloaded with hours of Sesame Street episodes.
When we landed, it was fall. We wore jackets and spent the next week doing everything October expects of you: going apple picking, spotting pumpkins on doorsteps, crunching through piles of scarlet and orange leaves, eating apple cinnamon donuts and crumbles and pies (thanks to my mother-in-law for baking). Leo took the train for the first time and visited the Museum of Natural History and Central Park, the autumn light streaking across the pond as he and Adam drove sailboats in circles.
Back in LA, it was 88 and sunny, blue skies the way we left them. We shrugged off our jackets when we got to LAX; we didn’t need them anymore.
Stepping in (and out) of fall was both deeply comforting and disorienting. The weather in Los Angeles is a presence I love and hate. Love: being outdoors with my son all year. Hate: the way the heat leaks through my best attempts at sweaters, summer lasting six months instead of three, an endless loop of the same days.
The feminine urge to lean into fall has become a sort of social media trope in recent years, evoking images of Gilmore Girls reruns, oversized sweaters, and pumpkin spice everything. It’s peak girl, core millennial, wedged between nostalgia and sharpened pencils, cozy meets back to school. But what is it about fall that makes it so alluring?
There’s fall and then there’s New York City in the fall, which is a specific kind of perfect. You’re someone there, with your coat pulled tight around you, like a bookish Meg Ryan sauntering around the Upper West Side in You’ve Got Mail. Maybe it’s not fall itself, but the idea of New York in the fall that feels so good. There is something right-sizing about being a small part of a bigger story so many other people have told before.
Maybe there’s something biological about it. Like cycle syncing – the idea of matching your exercise and energy outputs to where you are in your menstrual cycle - season syncing makes sense to me in thinking about our inner rhythms. I feel a real urge to nest in the fall and winter months. To bake (in theory…or at least consume baked goods), to read, to let my body rest in slouchy sweaters after a busy summer. In this way, new seasons allow for a natural ebb and flow. Maybe we love fall because it offers us a fresh start; it’s potential and opportunity and a clean slate.
Or…maybe it’s not that deep? Maybe fall is just nice and tastes like cinnamon sugar and Halloween candy and hot apple cider.
Maybe the allure of fall is that it’s anchored in so many practices that feel good: gratitude, holidays, an emphasis on gathering with community. Like the first day of a new job, fall is a chance to be different. Better. With the change of temperature comes new outfits and new versions of ourselves. The stagnant summer in LA, on the other hand, feels like a run-on sentence that I want to turn the page on. Sometimes, in the unrelenting sunshine, I feel overexposed – pumped full of expectation under the spotlight of the sun, bloated with the pressure to look filtered and bright all year long.
But consider this:
