My favorite time of year has always been fall. Growing up outside of Boston, when the weather turned from hellish humidity to crisp cool days, life was the best. The freezing temperatures of winter were still, if we were lucky, some weeks away and we made the best of the days ahead. Some of my best memories are going apple picking with my mom or taking a drive to the beach where we sat on the sea wall and ate Fried Clams (with the bellies for me, without them for my mom since she hated them). The leaves were turning color, although we never had enough to make a big pile to jump into, I loved hearing them crinkle under my feet. The days got shorter, which was and is always fine for me until Christmas, then I'm ready for the longer days again. There were just no bad memories in the fall. I lost no one I loved, I was settled into school (well, there were bad memories there but in the end, they don't count in this recollection), and Halloween was right in front of us. My mom always made sure that every day of the season was filled with good food and even better times just being together.

Even when I moved to California, where fall was pretty much non-existent, I still enjoyed October. The heat finally lost its hellacious hold on Palm Springs, and LA was cool, though the air was still not as crisp as I would have liked. These days, I'm still trying to figure out the weather pattern in Texas. There doesn't seem to be one, save except summer's sizzling days and crazy pop-up thunderstorms that shake the roof off the house.

So, it really was no surprise that when we decided to change our lives, we picked October. The night of the big proposal was simple and easy - exactly like our relationship. We had gone to Dallas and were having dinner - at  a Mexican restaurant naturally, when I simply asked, "So, when are we getting married?"

The question was just a statement of fact. There was no jumbotron, no flash mob, no surprise party, no audience of strangers, no elaborate scene planned for months, and not even an engagement ring hidden in a glass of champagne or fruity dessert. It was just the two of us, having dinner like we did the first night we met. Because deep down, I always knew this was where the road was leading. All the back and forth between California and Texas was exciting and adding frequent flier miles was advantageous, but both us knew something had to eventually change. What was a surprise was that I moved to Texas. I loved and still adore California. It gave me my adult life, it helped shape the person I am and it gave me a family of my choosing. I've met so many great - and not so great - people over my years there and the ones that are still with me today mean more to me than I could ever properly put into words. I never imagined a world in the Central Time Zone, yet somehow I knew from that first flight to San Antonio that something was about to change. Deep down, I knew the California chapter had been punctuated.

And, in five weeks a new sentence to the story begins. The days are getting cooler, the heat is relinquishing its grasp on the Alamo City and the schedule for the big event is getting more exciting, and a bit stressful even though there are wonderful people called wedding planners. I never imagined a  day where I was the one in front of my family and friends, but life is unpredictable and that's what makes being alive so delicious. It's like that first taste of the apple that we picked from the tree when I was younger. We couldn't reach the highest branch for that perfect fruit that my mom saw from the ground, but we knew that was the one we wanted. So we pulled over the ladder and twisted it off. It relinquished so easily, because it knew it was ripened. Maybe it was our imagination but those apples made the tastiest pies and even when my mom mashed them up, the apple sauce still tasted the sweetest. And, this year, when October comes, there may not be a pile of leaves to fall into but in the seasons ahead, we are going to make sure it all starts with great food and even better times together.