Fall has fell. I realize it when I paw through my pinks and pool-blues in search of earth tones, and find that I sent home all my winter clothes already. When I smell roasted red peppers in the hallway every evening. When I see the green apples emerge in the grocery boxes. When the smell of a cold leather taxi seat reminds me of the ride to my grandma’s on Christmas Eve. When Bulgarian faces become red with color, but empty of expression. When the flys begin to slow. When every day seems like football weather. When I realize the sun has become my friend once again.
When I notice that not only the leaves are changing. That I have changed. That I’m the one telling my Bulgarian colleagues: Don’t worry, it will work out. That its me who says to a friend, regarding lunch: Well, lets just wait until Wednesday and we’ll play it by ear. That the announcement of no Internet because my organization lost the telephone company invoice provokes nothing but a shoulder shrug and a reach for more coffee. That the plug falling from my computer causes me to simply restart and plug it back in, without a sound from my dirty mouth.
It’s hard to change. And I’ve found it gets harder as you age. But still, if you chip away, and refuse to get discouraged, one day you wake up and surprise yourself. . .
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When I joined the Peace Corps, I logically expected to find similar people to myself. Didn’t you have to ripped from the same roll of cloth if you went to live for two years in a developing country? Apparently not. Apart from politics, where a certain majority existed in predictable stereotypical fashion, we were a sundry lot.
So a year or so ago, I determined that our common thread must be our relative low resistance to change. New homes, new friends, new bosses, new jobs, new food, new language, new lives. It just made sense.
But that wasn’t it either. Plenty of us resisted with fierce force. Tantrums. Occasional tears.
What us volunteers really shared, in coming here, was the acceptance of a challenge. And if you rise to that challenge, after dropping some of your own baggage (or two L’s and and E), internal change creeps up the back stairs of your mind, wraps itself in an afghan and goes to sleep, making you think it had been there all along.
that first shift of light, apparent at our latitude in late august, that tells me fall is coming & i have a mental temper tantrum in my summer-baby head. can you hear the whiny NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?!
then like the adventurous soul that i am, my vagabond spirit emerges & says…hey, it’s another adventure…a trip i can take right here when i can’t physically go.
so mid-september i embrace the new light & new temperatures & new aromas & new foods, finding that i have loved autumn all along!
smiles across the miles…
I love your description of Fall here. I also was nodding my head during your thoughts about what Peace Corps volunteers have in common – I was a VSO (the UK equivalent of a Peace Corps) and I was surprised to start with about how little any of us had in common, though it surprised me less the longer I was there.