My outfit today: a vintage 50s skirt, black t-shirt and sandals. What? November?
This is the first Fall season where I have completely missed that feeling of nostalgia that the season has always brought me. I often thought that it was the beginning of the school year that brought that wistful, inward feeling of Fall. Now I know better; it was the chill in the air, the turning of the leaves, that glow the trees gave off on sunny afternoons giving everything an otherworldly feel. Do people who grow up in Southern climes have that turning inward? And if so what prompts it? Maybe with time I will come to see the end of the opressive summer heat as the signal of something different. For now I just feel like I am waiting for something that has yet to come. A friend here told me that winter consists of waiting for winter only to find Spring has arrived and Summer is just around the corner.
I remember when I lived in the SF Bay Area I missed the seasons. Two of the things that most struck the Northeasterner in me was the lack of window screens and the fact that no one ever commented on the weather; it was almost always "nice" in the East Bay. Here in Houston the weather is definitely a topic...When will it ever cool down? What streets are flooded and impassable after one of our epic tropical rainshowers? My neighbors told me the other day that after Hurricane Allison some teenagers around the block were shuttling people out to the main road in their canoe. A few weeks ago two women, a mother and a daughter, drowned in their car when they got stuck under a flooded freeway underpass. Luckily our house has never flooded, but we do have flood insurance, just in case.
There are ways I know I can turn this weather to my advantage; a second growing season, citrus trees, months of bike rides along the bayou. It is strange though to feel the weather as a stranger, to realize how much my life in Northern climates was tied to the rhythm of the seasons. My guess is I will find that rhythm here eventually, possibly while standing in my backyard in February eating snow peas off the vine.
This is the first Fall season where I have completely missed that feeling of nostalgia that the season has always brought me. I often thought that it was the beginning of the school year that brought that wistful, inward feeling of Fall. Now I know better; it was the chill in the air, the turning of the leaves, that glow the trees gave off on sunny afternoons giving everything an otherworldly feel. Do people who grow up in Southern climes have that turning inward? And if so what prompts it? Maybe with time I will come to see the end of the opressive summer heat as the signal of something different. For now I just feel like I am waiting for something that has yet to come. A friend here told me that winter consists of waiting for winter only to find Spring has arrived and Summer is just around the corner.
I remember when I lived in the SF Bay Area I missed the seasons. Two of the things that most struck the Northeasterner in me was the lack of window screens and the fact that no one ever commented on the weather; it was almost always "nice" in the East Bay. Here in Houston the weather is definitely a topic...When will it ever cool down? What streets are flooded and impassable after one of our epic tropical rainshowers? My neighbors told me the other day that after Hurricane Allison some teenagers around the block were shuttling people out to the main road in their canoe. A few weeks ago two women, a mother and a daughter, drowned in their car when they got stuck under a flooded freeway underpass. Luckily our house has never flooded, but we do have flood insurance, just in case.
There are ways I know I can turn this weather to my advantage; a second growing season, citrus trees, months of bike rides along the bayou. It is strange though to feel the weather as a stranger, to realize how much my life in Northern climates was tied to the rhythm of the seasons. My guess is I will find that rhythm here eventually, possibly while standing in my backyard in February eating snow peas off the vine.
posted by Jeanne at 7:14 PM
1 Comments:
I don't think I'll ever get used to the weather in Houston--land of perpetual summer. (oh wait, there's that one week every year that it's sort of Fall-ish like.)
Flood insurance is a good thing. We have it to though we don't live in a flood plain.
Post a Comment
<< Home