I love autumn. It’s my favorite sea­son of the year. There’s some­thing about it that appeals to all my senses. The air smells crisp … which then reminds me of pump­kin pie and caramel apples. The leaves change to bright beau­ti­ful col­ors and once they fall, they are just so much fun to stomp on just to hear the crin­kling sound. And of course, there’s the change in weather … Indian sum­mer is great, but I do look for­ward to the drop in tem­per­a­ture just so I can start wear­ing my sweaters again.

Fall always invokes many mem­o­ries. The absolute geek in me remem­bers being excited to go back to school so that I could crack open those new books and break in those new sup­plies. There’s also the annual trip to the cider mill to get fresh cider and hot donuts and/​or to the apple orchards to pick fresh apples. And of course, there is always col­lege football.

Over the years, I’ve started to asso­ciate cer­tain songs with cer­tain sea­sons. Most peo­ple asso­ciate cer­tain scents with mem­o­ries, but I’ve always been one that tends to grav­i­tate to the music that has sur­rounded me dur­ing the peri­ods in my life. I describe it as my own per­sonal sound­track to my life.

For autumn, there is some­thing about The Cure that sticks out in my mind, par­tic­u­larly the “Dis­in­te­gra­tion” album and specif­i­cally the song “Pic­tures of You.” I’m sure it’s because I remem­ber see­ing them in con­cert dur­ing the fall of my senior year in high school; and the song has this haunt­ing melody that reminds me of say­ing good­bye to friends that have grad­u­ated and were head­ing off to col­lege for the first time.

And speak­ing of col­lege, another song sparks mem­o­ries of that first week­end of col­lege and mov­ing into my dorm room. “Life in a North­ern Town” by The Dream Acad­emy reminds me of leav­ing that shel­tered envi­ron­ment of Catholic school and expand­ing my hori­zons. I remem­ber this song being played by a per­son I had just met and was sur­prised that this par­tic­u­lar per­son would like this song as well. It reminds me that you can never judge a book by its cover.

Then there’s “Hands to Heaven” by Breathe. Every time I hear this song I remem­ber my first date in my Junior year in high school. It was the Home­com­ing Dance at my school and I was escorted by none other than the per­son I would even­tu­ally marry nine years later. Can you believe back then we were going to the dance strictly “as friends?” I think it’s rather inter­est­ing that the cho­rus to that song starts out as “So raise your hands to heaven and pray /​ That we’ll be back together some day.” Hmm… must have been a fore­shad­ow­ing of what was to come.

And the last quin­tes­sen­tial song for my Fall Sound­track is none other than the song of which my blog title came from. “Apron String” by Every­thing But The Girl has been a song that has been part of my life since I was in high school. The first time I ever heard it was by lis­ten­ing to the sound­track for the John Hughes film, “She’s Hav­ing A Baby.” Not that I really liked that par­tic­u­lar movie, but John Hughes, in my hum­ble opin­ion, always had a knack for pick­ing such great songs for any of his films. Any­way, this song reminds me of fall sim­ply for the fact that I remem­ber play­ing that sound­track over and over one autumn season.

It’s funny how “Apron Strings”, as a song has always been part of my life. First, dur­ing that one autumn sea­son that I played that song over and over again. Then, as I began to fall in love with my hus­band one spring day dur­ing a trip to Ann Arbor my senior year in high school. And finally as I have strug­gled emo­tion­ally over the past ten years with infertility.

My hus­band came up with the name of the blog, I think, strictly on the fact that he knew that this was prob­a­bly my most favorite song in the world. What he didn’t expect was that this blog and that song would be pretty much the run­ning theme for what I “needed” to blog about. I’ve had peo­ple ask me why I decided to name my blog “Apron Strings,” as the com­mon ref­er­ence to actual apron strings is about either being tied to one or need­ing to be cut from one.

For me, the song “Apron Strings” is all about long­ing. When put in con­text with infer­til­ity, it becomes specif­i­cally a long­ing for a child. If you haven’t had a chance to read the lyrics to the song, feel free to read it here. Then let me know what you think.

But get­ting back to the whole Autumn sound­track, music has always played a part in my life. I’d like to know what other songs peo­ple asso­ciate this sea­son with. There’s some R.E.M. songs that I can think of as well as some U2 songs (hmmm … per­haps “Octo­ber”?). Or per­haps it’s some­thing as silly as a song from the “Grease” sound­track. Come on … I can hear you hum­ming a song in the back of your head … let’s “hear” it in writing!

Mmmm … all this talk about autumn has got me crav­ing some warm apple pie and of want­ing to snug­gle under a warm blan­ket with Hubby. I’ll be catch­ing you guys later!