It’s silly how something so small can change everything.
Today, Starbucks brought back the pumpkin spice latte. I have to admit: I’m impressed with the marketing strategy of seasonal drinks. I’ve been missing it since, well, since it ended last year, around the time the Christmas eggnog latte started up. And ever since, I’ve been tasting it on my tongue: the sweetness like vanilla with a hint of pie and candy and Halloween. When it was in season, I drank it every day. It made ordering, which is usually such a chore, easy. Normally, ordering a Starbucks drink is a bold act of self-definition: Do I get grande? Tall? Vanilla? Mocha? Latte? Cappuccino? But the presence of pumpkin spice answers all my questions for me: grande soy no-whip pumpkin spice latte. No doubts. Nothing to wonder about.
It’s back, I think, too early. Pumpkin spice ought to come with the fall scents of falling leaves and cooling earth and the deep blue sky that only comes in autumn. It ought to be combined with woodsmoke and campfires and the bright cold whiteness of October evening stars. But the drink has come too early; it’s still August, and August in Georgia is full of heat and haze and cloudy afternoons. It has none of the crisp brightness of fall, and the pumpkins aren’t even planted yet.
But I don’t care, because the instant I tasted my pumpkin spice latte, it was all there: the brilliant fall colors, the crunch of leaves under my feet, the smell of the woods and the hint of winter’s bite in the air. The heat still hangs in the air outside, but the latte brought fall to my tongue in a single sip. I can hear the fire crackling and feel the leaves under my boots. It’s time for hiking in the mountains, for cuddling by the year’s first fire, for raking leaves just for the pleasure of jumping in them. I don’t care what the calendar says; fall is here. My latte makes it so.
