Autumn in New York

A recipe, a restaurant, and why I'm a fall girl now

Last September, when we moved to the city after twenty years in the suburbs, everyone kept saying to me, You’re picking the best time to show up — there’s nothing quite like autumn in New York. (Pretty sure there’s even a song about it.) As a lifelong summer lover, I was skeptical. I like my long days and my golden-hour swims, and I get an irrational amount of happiness slipping on my Birkenstocks every day from May until October. But these people weren’t wrong. Fall is amazing in New York. For me, here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, it’s not even about the trees turning gold in Central Park or the crisp air or the way the Hudson River looks deeper blue in the angled sunlight, or the fact that the weather makes even a three-minute walk to Fairway feel like I’m in a Nora Ephron movie. It’s more about the return of that distinct New York energy to the streets, like there’s been an infusion of oxygen into the veins of the city, kids rushing for their school buses with their giant backpacks, sweaty runners in packs and pairs heading to and from Riverside Park, women walking purposefully towards the subway in chic outfits that I will attempt (and fail) to replicate later. The best part of my day is first thing in the morning, when I emerge onto the street from my sleepy apartment building for a coffee run and feel my body shift into a gear that makes caffeinating feel almost redundant.

I also find myself thinking about my father a lot this time of year. Fall was his favorite season for different reasons, but mostly because it wasn’t summer. He and his two siblings grew up in a small apartment in the Bronx right next to Yankee Stadium, and unlike a few of his lucky friends and neighbors, didn’t have the means to travel in the summer, didn’t go on vacation or to camp, and he often spoke of feeling left behind. So for him, fall was the great equalizer. Everyone was home. And like kids everywhere and of every generation, he found comfort in feeling just like everyone else.

When he died last December, my friend Liz, who has also lost her father, told me that the times I’d miss him the most might not necessarily be on his birthday or on Father’s Day or the more “expected” days — for her, it was seeing the single plate in the sink when her mom was finishing up dinner. I find this to be true. For me, most recently, a more-than-everyday sadness registered when I borrowed his car (still sitting in my mother’s driveway), and saw that the tank was only half-filled — which may sound crazy, but he was obsessive about a full tank, and if one of his kids was going to use his car, that full tank was just one more way on a very long list of ways he made us feel cared for. I also miss him terribly whenever I hear “April Come She Will,” by Simon & Garfunkel, a band he used to play a lot when we were young, especially after their famous live concert in Central Park. You know that part where Art Garfunkel sings “September, I remember” and turns “re-meh-ehm-ber” into four syllables? I don’t even really understand why — my father’s love of September maybe — but there is such acute pain in that lyric. There’s beauty, too, of course, and I guess that’s the deal. It’s the overlap of the two where I find him now.

Whoo boy. OK, two more big reasons why this lifelong summer girl is suddenly finding herself on Team Fall. Let’s talk about sports: My dad who grew up watching Joe DiMaggio (“the most elegant”) in his backyard would’ve been so incredibly psyched about the Yankees right now. Last Saturday night my brother came over to watch a barn-burner of a playoff game while Andy and I cooked some shoyu chicken with a miso-ginger slaw…you know, typical sports bar stuff. But magical October baseball is the least of it for me. I’m the mother of a soccer player and a cross country runner, so fall has always felt like eight straight weeks of Super Bowls, and that is especially the case this year. My daughter, Abby, is half way through her final college soccer season and let me just say that as a spectator currently in my fifteenth year spectating, I am leaving it all on the field, driving around New England (sometimes even in my dad’s car) to catch every game I possibly can, because I know how much I’ll miss it when it’s over. And New England this time of year, you might’ve heard? Not too shabby.

{P.S. Lucky for you, we did not make it to Abby’s game in Maine this past weekend, and instead live-streamed her match while eating maybe the best lunch I’ve made all year: Crispy Lentils and Greens Over Whipped Yogurt with a Jammy Egg, above — the recipe and other details are below.}

Finally, fall is when we celebrate our wedding anniversary — happy 27th to us! — and last weekend, two miracles occurred: 1) I didn’t wear jeans to our celebratory dinner and 2) I managed to get reservations at…