Fall underneath

How I know I’ve found my home in New York: Fall comes so readily here, a friendly young snuffling up your hems and into your hair, that early wind with the cool belly that you feel as August draws its thick days away. You feel night coming sooner. You feel the tiny nip in the air. You turn off your ACs at night. You are kinder to the people you encounter. You are happy again.

Fall to me is an eternal memory book: Every one of them prompts a nostalgia I’m sure will only grow stronger as I grow older. I always think of the last one when the new one comes around. This fall, I think of leaving my job in Manhattan and beginning my love affair with my bike. I think of the beginning of a false school year: Last year I was, and still am, not in school, but because I work in a school, I get to pretend. I think of visiting a friend in the mountains of New Jersey, dragging Doxy out of the creek’s thick mud and dreaming of Oso. I think of falling for Brooklyn – not just New York, Manhattan, “the city” as we all call it – but the town where I live. Working here means I am always here. And when you are always somewhere, that somewhere one day becomes a here.