Fall evokes my deepest passions. I love the first cool day when you can bring your sweaters out. When the leaves begin to coat the walkways. The anticipation of Halloween. College football and campuses filled with bright young minds full of hope and ideas.

I love college campuses during the fall, especially old campuses like Sewanee with its gothic stone walls set in a canopy of trees burning gold, orange and red. A hopeless romantic, I imagine a younger self walking across campus to a stately library filled with old volumes, arched doorways and creaky wood floors. I’m reading a leather bound works of Coleridge or Goethe when I catch the eye of a pretty girl in a wool sweater with dark tossed hair. I plot my opening line and visualize our torrid love affair.

We visited Alex at Vanderbilt during a recent fall. As we walked the paths through campus, my mind drifted back to when I was his age. I wished I could do it again. I became a little sad considering how quickly my time had passed, but also felt great joy knowing I had such a fine son making now his own memories. He was our last to graduate from college and finish post graduate studies. Now I have to hang on long enough to take another fall walk with my grandson and hopefully, a granddaughter.

Come soon, fall. We are waiting.