Fall is late, but the holidays are on schedule, which means I’ll be getting my weepy hankies out now. I mean, no little ones in the house, not even a big one right now, yet I’m all the more sentimental. Am I the only pathetic one here?

I notice things more deeply this time of year. Take the other day. I noticed a young lady driving a car and stopped next to me at the traffic light. She waved and smiled. I smiled back, and that’s when I noticed her mother in the “ready” position for the change of the light. You know it, all you parents of new drivers — one arm firmly braced to the frame of the driver’s side window, the other hand stuck to the dashboard to keep you from allegedly flying through the windshield. I imagine the foot solidly on the imaginary brake. I remember those days well. Time flies.

With no kids in the house and being out of town for my last classes up north, I failed to properly decorate for Halloween. I’m sorry, but kids or no kids, I gotta catch up for Christmas. I mean, not only am I overly sentimental this time of year but I’d be really grouchy if I didn’t get my dose of the wreath I made of the boys’ old plastic toys or put their little ornaments up they made in preschool with their little faces beaming. They grew too fast. Thankfully this is LOML’s second year in the holiday house so he shouldn’t be too scared.

My little neighbor, who is in fifth grade, came around the other day selling See’s Candy to raise money for their school trip to Yosemite. I automatically ordered Santa Boxes to put with my sons’ stockings. Whoa, old habits are hard to break. But, they loved them. Well, OK, Miles actually ate one or two things and then hoarded the rest in the closet. Did that with Halloween candy, too. Think I found his Santa box some years ago long after he’d moved out … I know it was his because Zachary was more after my own heart when it came to candy. GONE.

As groovy as we all are here in my house, the tension is just ever so palpable. Where is the boy going to stay when he comes? How long? Why? “To visit all the other kids coming home from college.” Whose house are we eating Christmas dinner at? Haven’t talked to my sister yet. Gotta get Ed’s girls into the Skype thing before then.

Boy, my older son had better Skype me for Christmas morning … I’m so bummed to think of him alone on these holidays. “I told him moms are way more touchy about these things than us guys sometimes,” his dad said in a recent chat. Sigh, “I suppose so.”

I like tradition, what can I say. I’m looking forward to Hospitality Night, Dec. 6 here in Cambria. I hope it’s cold but not rainy like sometimes it is. I hope the streets are packed the way they used to be. I’ll be down at Soto’s doing chair massage this year. Something different for me. BUT, it will be a lovely way to be in the thick of things!

And I’ll get weepy seeing the kids I’ve watched grow up bringing kids of their own or friends with grandkids and all that hub bub, just watching the calendar pages whip in the wind as they all grow up. Tissue anyone?

Dianne Brooke’s column is special to The Cambrian. Email her at tiedi@att.net, or visit her web site at www.ladytiedi.com.