When Life Takes Your Pumpkins...

For at least all of my adult life, Fall has been my favorite season. My friend Scott does the best autumnal things, like getting candles in all the right smells, hosting pumpkin carving contests, and, along with the rest of a group of like-minded friends, plans outings to haunted hayrides and Hammer movie marathons. We used to walk at the beach a lot, and my favorite walks were the ones where the salt air was cooling off and there was a 20 degree difference between the stretches of sidewalk under the shadows of all the emptying hotels and the gaps where the sun came through.
I found myself missing that this year, sad that I'll miss out on all the fun.

Along with that, there's the food - the pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin spice lattes, and I thought surely, that would help fill in some of what I was missing, but alas, pumpkin is really hard to come by in Scotland. Even Starbucks, which I figured would be the same everywhere, doesn't offer the Fall seasonal flavors that they do in the US. I spent a little too much time whining and convincing myself that I was homesick for these things. I didn't make it home for Thanksgiving last year, and I won't this year either, but I'd decided that since our friends here seem to rotate hosting little gatherings at home, one of our turns would be a Thanksgiving dinner. After seeing how hard it is to find pumpkin, my ears drooped and I became convinced that it just wouldn't be the same.

Then, tonight, while I was putting some dessert together, I took a good look at what was in front of me, and what it all meant:

See the mug? Not only does it say I [heart] boys in kilts, reminding me of the sweet Scottish guy I'm here to be with, but it's full of coffee from my new coffee maker, a gift from my mom to give me back one of those comforts of home I'd been missing. Then, there's the Mackie's honeycomb ice cream, which may possibly be the best ice cream I've ever had in my life. If you've ever had a Cadbury's Crunchie bar, it's like the inside of that, mixed in with this amazingly light ice cream, and, more to the point, is not available in America. Granny Smith apples, oatmeal, and brown sugar are plentiful enough in America, so I could make that apple crisp at home, but the important thing is, I could make it here.

I realized that I actually have everything I was missing, with the exception of the specific friends who are back home. I miss them, and if there were some way to get everyone all together at once, I'd do it, but I have memories of previous years and more years to look forward to with them, and I'm sure we'll make the most of them.

Right now, I have autumnal food; I have a damn fine cup of coffee; I have new friends and my boy; I have things that I can enjoy here, that I couldn't if I were anywhere else but where I am right now.