things that weren't part of my childhood

[sev]

My family left the east coast of the US when I was just shy of my ninth birthday. After a decade and a half in California, I was convinced that the firey autumns of my memories were a lot like the houses that seemed bigger, the candy that tasted sweeter, and the jokes that seemed funnier when I was a kid...overly-rosy nostalgia.

The first time I left California during the fall was a visit to Seattle in early November, 1996. My god. There were trees with these incredibly colored leaves *everywhere*! I walked around wide-eyed for the whole trip.

My friends were very amused.

I moved up here nine months later. I've been in Seattle for seven years now, but this time of year is still magic for me. Today I raked leaves and put them in big piles in the yard. I'm going to sit outside next to them and collect a bag or two of pretty-colored maple and cherry leaves. And then I'm going to jump in a pile of leaves.

I've never done that before.

Earlier I sat down next to the big wet icky spots that had been underneath the leaves out on the sidewalk, and collected all the squirmy worms and cute little pillbugs and dumped them in the compost bin. That was fun, too.

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

*smile* I'm that way about spring. Even though it's been 25 years since I moved to the Northwest from the Great Lakes region, I still *boggle* every February when the daffodils start coming up, and can't resist taunting my midwestern friends with a litany of spring flowers while they're still buried in snow and slush.