Family and friends be forewarned: I am planning a big rendezvous in Provence Fall, for me, always marks the beginning of a new year in an evocative way that January never has. I suppose I never outgrew that heady feeling I got as I set my binders, lined paper, and new pens and pencils next to the door and eagerly anticipated the first day of school. In college, the stack got taller with all the new books for classes, instilling an even greater sense of possibility. (Maybe that’s the reason I kept on going, completed the doctoral degree, and became a university professor although being on the other side was never the same.) With children, those of us who loved the start of school had the pleasure of reliving those warm and fuzzy feelings all over again. Now with our daughter in her last year of university—I just sent her off, armed with clean clothes and linens rather than school supplies which, naturally, she prefers to buy on campus several states away—I am gradually coming to rely on some different markers for the inception of my new year. Removing the screens and closing the windows in our 18thcentury home, transferring [...]