Fall Friday

I took myself to breakfast at Tom's this morning, the diner made famous by Seinfeld. I sat outside and ate my eggs and edited my manuscript and watched the returning students and their parents wander by, the parents with that particular mix of joyful pride and bewildered sorrow on their faces as they prepare to let their baby birds fly. The morning is crisp and blue and the neighborhood is once again buzzing with college kids after the empty sidewalks of summer. Freshmen on group tours of the Columbia environs are blooming on every street corner, their faces eager and rapturous. It's hard not to call back how it felt when I was in their shoes, thirty-nine impossibly swift years ago now. It makes me smile even as it pricks me with nostalgia. Fall has arrived. It used to be my favorite season because I was always excited to return to school myself. It is a sweet melancholy to remember.