You’ve Got Mail

Autumn is not quite upon us yet, dear reader, but I am finding myself thinking increasingly of that best (and shortest) of seasons. Spring is cheerful, summer is lazy and languid, winter starts out invigorating and then slowly melts to a sodden, dirty grey puddle, but autumn - oh, autumn is beautiful and perfect from start to finish. The air gets crisp and tangy, even before it properly cools down, and the riot of colour from the finery of the trees never ceases to surprise and delight me. There are satisfying thunderstorms that rinse the heat and stickiness of summer away, leaving cool breezes and puddles pooling on the asphalt. At its commencement, autumn is for reaping summer’s bounty: ripe stone fruit and corn-on-the-cob, apple picking and more zucchini than you can shake a stick at. This is followed by what I now think of as ‘stationery season.’ I am no longer in school, but the urge to stock up on fresh pencils and pristine notebooks - as Anne would say, ‘with no mistakes in them’ - hits me like a freight train. Then it deepens into rusts and golds and brilliant oranges, ideal for cider and anything made with pumpkin, for cozy sweaters and chunky socks. In turn, autumn grows spooky and shivery: rustling leaves, encroaching dark, and the Witching Hour! And finally, autumn lays its head on a pillow, turns over, and falls asleep, giving way to winter, having had it’s last colourful hurrah. I know the New Year technically happens in January, but after literal decades of school, it’s hard not to think of the end of summer (the Sunday of the year, I always think), as the Old Year bowing out, and autumn as the New Year stepping in to take its place.

All of this charming and cozy fall goodness must needs be accompanied by another autumnal ritual, at least in my house: autumn movies. For whatever reason, there are a handful of films that not only take place in the fall, but seem to fairly sing of the season. I tend to think of them as ‘golden’ movies, or ‘oboe movies’ - because their colour palettes tend to feature autumnal colours so much, and their soundtracks accent the oboe, what we might consider the musical equivalent of a goose - very autumnal. Fly Away Home, Rudy, Sweet Home Alabama, Sleepless in Seattle, Practical Magic, Little Women, Dead Poet’s Society, When Harry Met Sally, and yes, You’ve Got Mail. While different in many ways, the characters in these films have one thing in common: they all seem to have enviable knitwear. These aren’t perfect films, but they are the movies that seem to align best with this time of year, so I dutifully make a cup of tea, put out some fresh baking, cocoon myself in a blanket, and watch them nearly every weekend from September to the end of November. You’ve Got Mail begins its plot in autumn - more specifically, autumn in New York - and when Meg Ryan waxes poetic about bouquets of sharpened pencils, it’s hard not to get nostalgic and yes, perhaps a little weepy about them with her.

The letters of this week’s episode, and the ‘oboe movies’ that I’ll be watching soon, both speak to nostalgia, the yearly pause that autumn brings, the beginnings of new journeys, and the deaths of the old. Perhaps Maya Angelou put it best in her poem, Preacher, Don’t Send Me:

I'd call a place
pure paradise
where families are loyal
and strangers are nice,
where the music is jazz
and the season is fall.
Promise me that
or nothing at all.

Jennifer