I like fall. My birthday is in the fall, and it’s one of few distinct seasonal changes that we experience here is Seattle. If you stand on our balcony and lean out you can see a bit of the canal and the east slope of Queen Anne hill turning red and gold. It’s nice.

For some reason I can’t really get into the traditional fall holidays though. Halloween is okay. I like carving pumpkins at least. But Thanksgiving kind of trips me out. I can’t get over that it was the beginning of the end for 500 nations. In fact, ever since I watched Colonial House last year I’ve been obsessing about attending the National Day of Mourning at Plymouth Rock. To do what exactly? I’m not sure. Maybe make some sort of small cultural confession, I don’t know.

My favorite things about the fall are Rosh Hashannah, Back to School stuff, and the Equinox. Our family has a tradition of eating chili on the first day of fall. In fact, the other day I heard my neighbor saying to Eden, “Well, it’s getting chilly. It must be fall.” Eden replied; “It can’t be fall. We haven’t had our first bowl of chili yet.” So two weeks ago, on the fall equinox, we had our annual chili fest at ThPM. This one is for the neighbors and Eden went door to door passing out invitations. It’s a simple affair, chili, cornbread, brew, and a pan of brownies. I made two pots of chili, one veggie and one with meat, and got ready for a few more people than usual.

Thirty one adults and eleven kids showed up! The house was packed. Dave and Barbie came with baby Luna (“LunaBird”) and a bunch of dried lavender from their front yard. Tom and Pamm (with two m’s, because it’s better numerology) came with a crisp made from the apples off their tree. Somehow I ended up with a couple nice bottles of Shiraz. Thanks, whoever you were.) My friends Rich and Rose came down from the northend. Craig sat out on the back porch with a couple of the guys. We only have motion activated lights out there so I lit the candelabra. It was funny to see the guys swigging beers by candlelight! The house was so jammed I could hardly walk through it. (Luna literally got stepped on at one point!)

After a while things cleared out a bit and a few of us went out to the front lawn to watch Tonya and Fiona fire spin. There were too many folks around to light the wicks, so they substituted glow sticks. It’s so cool to see the various spinners’ styles. Tonya is measured and focused. Fiona, a dancer, has fluid moves like sea grass. Josh, a strong physical presence, bends low at the knees and creates this solid gravitational pull for the chains to orbit around. I could watch them all night.

Claire, the teenager across the street dances hula and knows a little about spinning poi balls. She’d been kind of lurking around the edges when Fiona offered to teach her, then they spun a bit together. Eden even got in on the games. She’s totally gonzo! She just grabs the chains and spins like a wild woman! She doesn’t even seem to care if they bean her in the head or whack her shins.

Earlier in that day I had given Alissa an invitation to the chili fest. Alissa rides the bus home with Eden. She usually stops and sits on the swing Josh hung in our Hawthorne tree and we visit awhile. She latchkeys it some days, and it’s nice to give her a little attention before she heads home to her apartment. I’ve never met her mom, so I wrote a quick note on the back of the invitation. “We’ve really enjoyed getting to know your daughter. Stop on by if you can.” I was totally floored when Alissa, her mom, and her baby sister came through the front door. It was such a nice surprise. Jessica, the mom, is going to school full time and taking care of the two kids on her own. It was nice to exchange numbers. (It’s always good to have a back-up mom to call in the case of a school transportation crunch!) I didn’t see Alissa again that week, but on Monday she brought me this note. It says, “Thanks for inviting us. We really liked the food and company. 1,000 thanks. Alissa, Jessica and Liberty”

It’s a colorful party, come on in.