"And I feel, so much depends on the weather." ~ Stone Temple Pilots 

Return of the clouds...sounds like a dramatic title, huh? Foreshadowing doom, impending and inevitable conflict. WRONG. Just a sign of the change in the seasons, that's all. Sunday is the autumn equinox. The Fall Solstice. I will be doing ritualistic, celebrational things all day (scheduled around my son's ball game, of course). Because I have emotional contingencies regarding the change of seasons. It's the noticeable progression in the environment that somewhere in my life I have come to need. Maybe just feeling that I am in appropriate time and space, I don't know. What I do know is that the seasons and their weather patterns give me the reassurance that things will always change, but never change.   

For the past two weeks, I have had the the post-summer/not yet autumn blues. We have been hovering in between seasons in a hot, uncomfortable way and it's messing with me. I need autumn to just begin already.

I took my kids to the beach for one last play date the first week of school, and even though Labor Day had been two days earlier, the beach felt different - fewer people, the ones that were there didn't smile very much; the water was not glassy or turquoise, but murky and foamy; there was excessive, stinky seaweed piled on the sand with little flying insects abuzz; the water seemed more than ten degrees cooler than the week prior when the waves wanted to party; the current was more like a fury and less like a wind carrying us along.

Then, we had another southern California heat wave. Everyday when I picked up my kids from school, by the time I had put the baby in the stroller, walked to the classrooms and thought of something different to say to each mom that I knew, I was a sweaty, exhausted mess. The resulting crankiness it causes me is a tell-tale sign of the in-between summer and autumn stage.

The most unfortunate sign of late summer/autumn blending together for many other southwestern America residents is wildfires - you can almost guarantee that sooner or later in the orangeish in-between season sky, you'll notice large billows of smoke, and pick up the scent of burnt timber in the air. This year, our eastern small-towns in the mountains and their apple orchards are victims to the blaze. Notoriously dry, parts of southern California go up in flames sometimes. It just happens, but there is always the promise of  regeneration. When wildfires happen, the cheery "Not a cloud in the sky!" San Diegans I know so well begin to say "Hope we get some rain soon."

I hope for that every day of the year. That's just me.

And today was finally different. This morning when we left the house to walk to school, the clouds greeted us.  This was comforting to me like down pillows on a king size bed at the end of a long day. The air was less like a crowded Chuck E. Cheese stuffiness and more like the gust coming out of the freezer on a humid day. My son, seemingly excited like me at the chnage in weather, grabbed his new maroon hoodie with a soccer ball sewn on and zipped it up to the top.

We walked to school this morning for the first time not panting like dogs and blocking the morning sun from our eyes, but able to see without squinting.

It's here, autumn is here, I told myself. Years ago, I would have felt an urge to bake an apple pie. These days, I simply hope to get my kids to school on time. But with just the presence of the clouds this morning, my spirits were lifted...the grey clouds banished my blues. I feel like the calendar matches the weather and to my fickle mindset, that is a blessing.

I don't know when my moods became contingent upon the weather and recurring seasons. Even when it's a sweltering summer day that keeps me floating in the pool or hiding in the safety of my a/c, I know to expect summer weather in summer time so therefore I can cope very well. But it's the unpredictable stuff, the undefinable, in-between seasons that find me reaching for explanation, desperate for a day that will give me less surprise and more guarantee. I don't want to control the weather. I just want the things I can't control to be...scheduled. That's just me.

I don't mind a sudden summer rainstorm, I find them romantic and the steam rising off the hot concrete afterwards smells musty and tropical. I can take an unseasonably hot day in late November without going into a depression and envying the Northeast their fresh snow. But come late September, if the weather isn't going to cooperate with the photograph of trees with yellow and orange leaves on my calendar, at least promise me that cooler days are in my near future. I can fill in the rest if I have to.

I need to know that progression is nearing. I need to know I can count on it for a while. That's just me.