It Was Inevitable

The weather has been too mild to be considered the beginning of the holiday season but there it is right there on my calendar. I tried to begin my Christmas shopping yesterday and wasn't in the mood. I even walked by an azalea bush with a few blossoms on it. talk about being confused. But, there was something different about the air when I left the mall. Call it a hunch or whatever but I could smell the snow coming. The air had a crisp almost fresh quality about it. It was like being out in the middle of the wilderness, miles from any road or factory, at dawn. The air becomes clean, unspoiled, almost new, as if all of the pollution had been filtered out overnight. It's hard to explain exactly what that type of air smells like and my family has, in the past, thought me nuts when I've mentioned that I could smell rain coming. They are always surprised when the rain begins to fall a few minutes later. So, I don't know why I found myself in that same condition when the flakes began to filter down from the heavens. The wind picked up with a fresh earnest and suddenly it was winter. Well, almost. The traffic slowed and everyone became cautious of the way they walked down the sidewalk. And so the transformation from late autumn to early winter had become complete. And i was dressed for late autumn.