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A Sixty and Me contributor reflects on how autumn traditions shaped family life after she moved from Tokyo to New York, including annual trips to pick apples and raspberries. Now living in Miami, she says pumpkin-season treats bring back memories of family gatherings and a more sharply changing Northeast fall.
Sixty and Me published a personal account of how autumn traditions followed one family from New York into adulthood, and how their meaning changed after the writer moved to Miami. The essay recalls annual trips to a farm in Red Hook, New York, and describes how seasonal foods now bring back memories of her late husband and children.
The writer says she moved from Tokyo to New York as a young mother with three children under age 3. At first, she was occupied with settling into a new home and country. The sudden shift from warm weather to colder air and the bright colors of trees in the Northeast later made autumn an especially vivid part of family life. She compares the impact of that seasonal display with seeing Tokyo’s cherry blossoms for the first time.
The family developed an annual outing to Greig Farm in Red Hook. They drove north together, stopping at a diner for breakfast before picking raspberries and apples, choosing a pumpkin and visiting a roadside farmers’ market. The writer remembers buying vegetables and cider, eating apple cider doughnuts and bringing home fruit for baking, freezing and sharing with friends and the children’s teachers.
The trips continued as the children grew up, including when they were in college and later working in New York City. The essay then turns to the writer’s move to Miami, which came a few years after her husband died in 2002. She describes Miami’s seasonal change as subtler, but says a recent visit to Trader Joe’s, with its pumpkin products, apples, cider and doughnuts, prompted her to recall the family’s earlier autumn routines.
How Family Rituals Carry Across Moves
The essay presents autumn as both a seasonal experience and a family ritual. The farm trips offered a recurring day together, while the fruit and treats extended the outing into meals, gifts and memories at home. The writer’s account shows how an ordinary seasonal routine can keep its emotional weight even after a family’s circumstances and location change.
Her contrast between New York and Miami also highlights how place shapes the experience of a season. In the Northeast, she recalls crisp air, vivid foliage and early darkness; in Miami, she describes outdoor dinners in winter and a gentler change in temperature. The essay does not frame one version as better. Instead, it links the new setting’s seasonal cues—especially familiar foods—to memories of the old one.
For readers, the piece offers a personal example of how traditions can persist without being repeated in exactly the same way. The writer no longer describes the same family trips, but buying cider, apples and doughnuts in Miami reconnects her with them. That connection is the essay’s central point: seasonal customs can hold family history, while also bringing sadness when the people and routines associated with them have changed.
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From Tokyo to New York to Miami
The account begins with the writer’s move from Tokyo to New York, where she was raising three very young children. She recalls initially paying little attention to weather while adjusting to a new life, then becoming more aware of autumn through the colder air, changing foliage and family outings. Her comparison with Tokyo’s cherry blossoms places autumn within a broader personal history of noticing seasonal change in different cities.
The family’s farm visits became a yearly tradition that outlasted the children’s early years. After her husband died in 2002, the writer lived alone in the family home before moving to Miami a few years later. The essay contrasts the Northeast’s pronounced fall with Miami’s warmer winter season, where outdoor dining and time at the beach became part of her routine.
What the Essay Does Not Establish
The source is a first-person essay, not a reported study or a survey of how people experience autumn. It offers the writer’s memories and feelings, but does not establish how common those experiences are among other families or people who move between climates. The supplied material also does not give a publication date, so the timing of the reported Trader Joe’s visit cannot be independently placed.
The essay describes the writer’s experience of reduced sunlight and says she was developing what she calls “sun deprivation syndrome.” It does not provide a clinical diagnosis or medical evidence for that phrase. The account should be read as a personal description rather than a medical finding.
The essay closes by asking readers what fall means to them, whether their families marked the season in a special way and how they celebrate it now. No further reporting or follow-up is included in the supplied source. The immediate next step described is an invitation for readers to respond with their own memories and traditions.
Key Questions
What is the Sixty and Me essay about?
It is a personal reflection on the writer’s autumn experiences in New York and Miami, including family trips to pick fruit and the memories prompted by seasonal foods.
What did the family do each fall?
They drove to Greig Farm in Red Hook to pick apples and raspberries, choose a pumpkin and visit a nearby farmers’ market. The writer recalls making desserts and sharing fruit afterward.
Why does autumn make the writer melancholic?
She says the season brings back memories of her family in New York, including the years she spent with her husband and children. Her account is personal and does not claim that everyone experiences autumn in the same way.
How does the writer describe autumn in Miami?
She says the temperature change is more subtle than in the Northeast. Seasonal products in a grocery store, including apples, cider and apple cider doughnuts, still evoke the fall traditions she remembers.
Source: sixtyandme.com
