How To Count Down To Fall
Count to 2007. You’re moving into the dorms for college. You’re eighteen. You’re skinny and nervous. Your dad installed the printer to your ten-pound Dell laptop. You push your parents out the door so you can start drinking and mingling. Class doesn’t start for eight days and you have no idea about the mistakes you’ll make this year.
Count to the evening of your first day of eighth grade. You’re sitting at home watching Kelly Clarkson win the first season of American Idol. You want to be happy but you’re mortified over what happened at school earlier in the day. You think the whole year will be ruined.
Count seven years back to breaking up with your first real boyfriend. You’re crying and confused. You think parting ways is the right thing to do, but you still want to stay over, this one last time.
Count to 2011. You’re at a Skrillex concert dancing your heart out. The person you have your eye on arrives and you tell him he’s with you. You continue to date for the next two years in an intense whirlwind of deep love and confusion.
Count to your first time in Las Vegas. It’s October and you’re twenty-two. You meet a man who tells you he loves you, but you come down with the flu and stay in your room until it’s time to go to the airport.
Count back to first grade. You’ve never been to public school before. You’ve never had to ask permission to use the bathroom. You’ve never ridden on the bus. You fear that everyone will be smarter than you. You fall in grandmother-love with your teacher.
Count back to school, back to school…
Count to last September. You’re breaking up again. You’re sad, but confident. You remind yourself that a breakup is a breakup, even if it’s the right thing to do. You think of the metaphor about Fall leaves reminding us that “some things are most beautiful just before they die.”
Count to dark lipstick.
Count to spiked cider.
Count to watching every Thanksgiving episode of Friends.
Count to all-black clothing.
Count to an indian summer, cable-knit this, pumpkin-flavored that. Count to Halloween. Count to cuddling up.
Count down to Fall.
