Fall Reminisces, Part Two

Fall is also a time of family. I have many memories of fall days spent with family. Driving to the summer cottage to shut it up for winter. Discussing the race with Mom and Dad. Traveling to Trinity in Connecticut, Amherst in Massachusetts, Harvard in Cambridge, Colby in Waterville, Maine, Bowdoin in Brunswick, Maine, Bates in Lewiston, Maine, Gordon in Massachusetts. Memories were forged on these trips that I’ll always remember. In Hartford, getting via Mom’s kindness to Uconn’s Midnight Madness in 1999, the year they won it all for the first time. In Cambridge, hearing Al Franken (no joke) relentlessly question an Admissions staffer on the calculation of SAT scores. At Bowdoin, falling in love with the pines, the buildings, the academic setting. Deciding on a college was quite an ordeal, but it was a delightful one.
Completing the applications to these schools was not delightful. Only by the temerity of my mother did I finish them. She laid them all out on the dining room table and wrote up what I needed to do to finish each one. With complaining, I eventually completed them.

I remember pasta dinners with the family on the Friday nights before cross country races. Pasta and Prego, Pepperidge Farm garlic bread, and milk. The champion’s meal. Actually, I don’t know what the champion’s meal was, cause I was never the champion. Oh well. I loved that meal. We all ate together, Mom, Dad, and Rachel, and those were sweet times. Family is a key part of fall for America. This held true for my family.