October air reminds me of all the seasons of your love

I used to hate fall with the vehement passion one generally reserves for slow drivers and people who bring 14 items into the 10-Items-or-Less line. I hated the slow drip into cold weather, the slide into those gray days of December and January. But I think I hated it because I was ignoring what was really happening--those crisp beautiful days when the sun is shining behind a cool breeze, when I can drive with my windows down and the heat on. The days when a light jacket is just enough to get me by, when it's too cool for the tank tops that didn't prevent sweating in the summer, too warm for the pea coats, scarves, and hats I know I will soon need. A couple of years ago, however, when I was driving to Kaplan every weekend, I suddenly started noticing the fall leaves on the back roads [the same roads that magically bring the smell of wisteria in the spring], and the past couple of days, Joey and I have been talking so much about how we love this beautiful fall weather. At night, the skies are becoming brighter, and I am looking forward to those bell-clear winter stars I get to see with a boy who will be able to tell me all about them.

This weekend, while at home, I retrieved all of my fall and winter clothes, and I have been folding and putting them up for the better part of an hour. This is another thing I love about fall: I forget, really, about all of the clothes I have, and I love folding them and putting them up, and smelling them, and thinking about all of the good memories I have with them. I unpacked the shirts that Allison and I both own, and I laughed because we never really change--yesterday, we went shopping, and she picked out a shirt that I desperately wanted as well. I unpacked jackets that I wore to formals, and things I have owned since high school, and most importantly, my Free Agent hoodie.

When Joey and I first met, he rode BMX with a group of his miscreant friends. His mom had made him the hoodie for Christmas, and he loved it. Unfortunately for him, I was in love with it too. I made all kinds of excuses to sneak it away from him whenever I could, and he usually obliged and let me wear it. One of my favorite "us" memories is from our first Thanksgiving. We had been dating for about a month, and we were very new to the idea of being together and loving each other in every possible way. I remember very clearly this: the two of us sitting on the couch in his room, and I was wearing nothing but his Free Agent hoodie and a pair of underwear, and I felt so warm and so safe and so ridiculously in love.

A little less than a year later, when I moved to college, Joey and I put boxes of things together for each other to have. With my box came the Free Agent hoodie, sprayed with his Curve cologne, and the first week, I fell asleep in it every night, cranking up the AC in my room just so I could fall asleep wearing a hoodie in August. I've been wearing it, all winter long, ever since that August.

The hoodie is no longer all fuzzy inside, and it's a little dingy now, but I love it more than any other item of clothing I own, because it's mine, because it reminds me of Joey in a way that even Curve cologne can't, and because it makes me feel so warm, so safe, and so ridiculously in love.