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Most people think of January 1 as the beginning of a new year. For me, the first of September has always had that honor instead.

While I enjoy some warm-weather activities, I am not a summer person. I’m pretty sure one of my ancestors was a candle; I tend to melt in extreme heat. The only daughter with three baseball-playing younger brothers, I was encouraged by my father, a frequent volunteer coach, to play softball. I tried, but my natural non-athleticism, combined with a tendency to daydream in right field and to collapse into an unconscious heap whenever I overheated, made me a less-than-sought-after team member. I began to equate heat with humiliation. September, while still very warm in Arkansas, promised approaching relief—a breath of fresh air that wouldn’t scorch the linings of my lungs.

Summers often dragged in my youth. The three television channels we received played reruns, leaving me waiting eagerly for the new seasons of my favorite shows. Living in what was then the country (now the thriving Salem community), I wasn’t interested in joining my brothers while they threw balls and climbed trees and roughhoused. I was a rapacious reader, and my mother had trouble keeping me in books. Saturday trips to the Benton library were the high point of my week, but my armload of books was usually consumed by Wednesday. Even then I wrote stories, and Mother had equal trouble providing enough paper. When I filled up every available notebook, I ripped blank pages from her library of romances and scribbled on those.

The summer I was fourteen, Mother decided to save money and have me babysit my brothers. That was a disaster. I have to admit the power went straight to my head, and my rowdy brothers predictably rebelled. After a few weeks of being interrupted every hour by wailing (long distance) phone calls, Mother hired a sitter and got me a job with the company where she worked, for which I would work every summer afterward until I finished college.

Then would come the fall. The mailman brought thick Sears catalogs filled with stylish plaids and tweeds, turtlenecks and cable-knits. I would pour through the pages of coats and boots, thinking maybe this winter we’d see snow. I adored the annual back-to-school shopping day, never happier than when surrounded by shelves of blank notebooks and new pens in the Benton Sterling store. I anticipated the first day of school the way "normal" children looked forward to the last.

Carrying my shiny new supplies and a David Cassidy lunchbox, wearing a new cotton dress from the Sterling Department Store, I would climb onto the yellow school bus with an always-optimistic hope that this new year would be my year. I would be seen in an all-new light by the classmates I’d known since first grade. I would be popular and sought-after and perhaps voted class president or cheerleader or homecoming queen. Needless to say, this shy, awkward, head-in-the-clouds girl with little sense of fashion and fewer social skills never wore a tiara or wielded a pom-pom, but I had very good friends among the honors students and English and journalism clubs where I was most at home.

As little interest as I had in baseball, I loved Bryant High football games — watching those cheerleaders I secretly envied, parading among the bleachers with my friends in hopes of being noticed by the cute boys, sipping hot chocolate from the concessions stand. To this day, the kickoff of football season is one of the high points of my year, a fresh start with no certainty of who will come out on top at the end. I’m sure this will be the year my favorite teams win.

Especially this summer, with its oppressive heat, I can’t wait for that first cool autumn morning, that first day when it makes sense to reach for a sweater rather than a fan. The colors, the smells, the clothes, the state fair, the anticipation of approaching holidays. Even the new TV shows. I love it all.

So, for anyone who shares my deep love of fall: Happy New Year! May this be your season to shine.