I was just folding laundry and listening to classical music on Spotify. I don’t know a thing about classical music so I just went to the Beethoven playlist (Mozart would have been just a tad more obvious). The music and the fact that it’s October reminded me of mornings with my parents.
I used to come downstairs to my father playing classical music on the stereo in the kitchen while he cooked himself breakfast. My mother used to love to go to the farmer’s market and I used to come downstairs to fresh vegetables on the kitchen table. And I remember the smell of basil. My mom used to grow it in the front yard. When my friends and I played soccer out there, we’d always manage to hit it and my mother would yell, “the basil!” Then we would imitate her right back, “the basil!” (She also grew mint but that wasn’t as fragrant.)
Every Sunday my father would go out and buy the usual. So, when I would wake up, there would be a brown bag of bagels for us. My father also bought me a Slurpee every Sunday morning for my entire childhood. I don’t know how it started. I imagine he must have done it on a lark when I was really little. But once my father starts doing something, he doesn’t stop.
Fall mornings are tied up with soccer for me as well. A lot of fall weekend mornings were spent going to soccer games in high school. As an adult, I started looking forward to watching Tottenham Hotspur in the mornings on weekends. When I was a kid, there was one soccer game on cable on Sunday mornings. It was from the Italian Serie A – usually Inter or AC Milan but sometimes Sampdoria or Napoli – and it was in Italian. I couldn’t follow it but it was soccer so I watched, usually flipping between that and whatever State re-run was on that morning. Then my mom would drag me to church.
October has always been my favorite month. It’s the month when you’re used to school but it hasn’t gotten stressful yet. The dew would freeze on the grass but then, in the afternoon, it would be warm. Leaves change. I feel like the coffee brewing in bagel shops smells more intense. That’s probably just a trick of my mind but I’ll take it. It’s playoff baseball season. At the end of the month you get a sack full of candy. What’s not to love?
