A change of pace …

I have not found my way in this strange new place. Moving uproots and undoes our known world, turning us in circles.

I dream of the city, the country side, and while fall colors dance in my head, I regress to another time. Instead of struggling against the winds of change, I bring you snippets from Sunset Park and Apple Picking Time.

Images have been taken from commons/free photography, two closed Brooklyn blogs, the NYS Department of Tourism, and my daughter, Jen G.

The seasons turn, and turn again.

Jen G. Photography

Time cannot be measured between the last days of innocence and the insinuation of adulthood.

Nor can anyone explain or remember where the shortest moments of their life, their childhood, vanished, or when they ceased to believe in magic.

Do you still believe in the magic of the changing seasons? Can  you remember the excitement each new autumn day brought?

The kids from Sunset Park scattered. Some of them walked up the long hills and were never heard from again, many married young, birthing and raising a new generation.

It was a fresh start as the kids and their parents threw off the remnants of the yesterdays that defined them and embraced a vision of a tomorrow they waited to realize.

 

Autumn in Sunset Park

Antoinette and her family moved to the neighborhood of Bay Ridge and met new challenges. For those who grew up in the surrounding area, the incredible vistas from a seven and a half mile bike path along Shore Parkway, adjacent to the Brooklyn Narrows, spanned these changing times.

It was in the ebb and flow of the waters, in the endless stream of people and traffic, the change began to define itself.

Dancing to another beat, both parents and children had yet to learn, eventually everything old is new again.

Shore Parkway Bike Path

The other dominating images of my childhood came from the summer and fall drives to my mother’s family in the sleepy town of Poughkeepsie. Snuggled in the Mid-Hudson Valley, Poughkeepsie is the “seat” of Duchess County, New York.

NYS Department of Tourism

Monica pointed the car north on Route 9 and headed for Dutchess where there were dozens of farms, farmer’s markets, roadside stands, dozens of apple picking orchards and best of all, Rinehart’s.

Along the river, Dutchess County began in the town of Beacon and traveled north along the river to Annadale-on-the-Hudson and the last before Columbia Country, the quaint town of Tivoli.

She inhaled the wonderful fragrances and became lost in the glorious scenery of leaves turning gold, bronze and red, brushed against the canvas of blue skies, the slate blue of the river, and stretched as far east as the towns bordering Connecticut.

Monica followed the map off the interstate and drove the station wagon through quiet back roads dotted with farms and white picket fences framed with round mums and zinnias in an array of fall colors.

…     The station wagon filled with the amazing scents of apple picking in the valley, Monica gave out seat assignments. The ten and eleven year olds squeezed between bushels of apples and pumpkins. The nine year old and the tomatoes shared the back seat with the twins, the baby and the corn. A pie on his lap, the eldest shared the front seat with Monica and the rest of the tomatoes. 

Twenty minutes from the house, everyone woke and the car exploded with the usual frenzy of kids shouting and music blaring. The baby, fed up with the entire event, spent the last fifteen minutes crying while the twins made funny faces to make her laugh.

Monica was in heaven.

Apple trees are short, fat, and easy to climb. I remember the fun of rolling in a pumpkin patch and plucking apples off low hanging branches. We filled a dozen bushels of Rome “beauties,” Courtland, Granny Smith, and the tangy Macs … and when all mixed together these combinations of flavors make the best pies you have ever eaten.

Our Canadian neighbors have already celebrated their Thanksgiving, ours yet to come the third Thursday of November. Apples, pumpkins, driving down a country road, and the cooler breezes … all conspire to carry me back.

“Fall back,” a change of seasons and a time nature begins to prepare for her long winter’s rest.

As I celebrate the season of my birth, I try to acclimate to my new surroundings and begin to find the rhythm of this new season of my life.

How do you celebrate the changing season?

Do you have a special place where you can enjoy the colors of autumn, the promise of new times?

fOIS In The City