Fall Feels a Little Different These Days

Fall has always felt like a beginning to me.

Maybe that is what happens when you spend most of your life in education. January might technically start the new year, but September has always felt like the REAL reset.

New school year. New routines. New possibilities.

And, for many years, fall also meant getting my son ready for another year of school.

The school supplies. The new clothes. The schedules. The forms. ALL. THE. FORMS.

There was always something comforting about getting back into that rhythm after summer.

But fall feels a little different these days.

My son is in high school now, and suddenly those back-to-school seasons feel numbered.

I find myself noticing things I probably rushed past when he was younger. The conversations in the car. Hearing about his day. Watching him become more independent. Seeing pieces of the man he is becoming while still catching glimpses of the little boy I remember.

It is such a strange part of parenting.

You spend years preparing your child to need you less, and then they actually start needing you less.

Rude. 😂

So, no, I don’t have a pumpkin festival. I’m not running a special “Fall Sale.” And I definitely don’t spend October celebrating that my kid has been back in school for a month.

Instead, fall has become a reminder for me to pay attention.

Maybe that is why I love this season so much. Everything around us is changing, and nature does not apologize for it. The trees do not cling desperately to what was. They change colors. They let go. They prepare for what comes next.

I am trying to learn how to do some of that too.

There is another chapter coming for both of us. I know that. And I am excited to watch my son build a life that is completely his own.

But I also know I am going to miss this chapter desperately when it is gone.

So this fall, I am trying not to rush toward what is next.

I am trying to be right here.

Because sometimes the seasons we are most eager to move through become the ones we would give anything to experience one more time.