september mo(u)rn?
“Day by day, and taking its time, the summer ended. The noises in the street began to change, diminish, voices became fewer, the music sparse. Daily, blocks and blocks of children were spirited away. Grownups retreated from the streets, into the houses. Adolescents moved from the sidewalk to the stoop to the hallway to the stairs, and rooftops were abandoned. Such trees as there were allowed their leaves to fall - they fell unnoticed - seeming to promise, not without bitterness, to endure another year. At night, from a distance, the parks and playgrounds seemed inhabited by fireflies, and the night came sooner, inched in closer, fell with a greater weight. The sound of the alarm clock conquered the sound of the tambourine, the houses put on their winter faces. The houses stared down a bitter landscape, seeming, not without bitterness, to have resolved to endure another year.” - James Baldwin, Just Above My Head
The cicadas outside my office window, up in the trees of the yards along my street, provide the backing vocals as evening falls upon this mid-August day. The temperatures this past week have cooled, our air conditioner getting a well-earned reprieve, as we've kept the windows open these past two days. Sixty degree temperatures greet the sun in the morning before rising into the low-eighties during the day bringing the house to a seemingly balmy 76 degrees. Yet somehow the body doesn't beg for the HVAC, slowly growing accustomed to the temperature like the proverbial frog in a pot of warming water. With a slice of fresh-baked blueberry and peach pie cooling by a dollop of vanilla bean ice cream and with windows open, a slight breeze begins to cool the house as my wife and I laugh at inside jokes and terrible impressions while our kids play in the unfinished basement. Tomorrow this scene will repeat with slight variations as we progress towards September.
While Europe is midway through their August closure, much of this country has already returned to school. I used to think this was a Southern thing, the children needing to start their summer early due to the heated heights of temperatures, before returning to the air conditioned classrooms in summer's swelter of August. I used to think it was a remainder of our agrarian days, the Grain Belt needing their children to reap what they've sown before heading back to school, a year older than a few months ago yet further behind than when they left it the previous spring. I've recently learned that even Union states like Ohio have already returned. And according to some quick research, 70% of students go back before August 25th. This same research would also reveal that it is not because of our agricultural past that caused the earlier starts, instead, in the early 20th century schools typically held a Summer and Winter session with Spring and Fall for planting and reaping respectively (and I’d assume respectfully given how children were wont to behave back then). But in New England and New York, even though we threw off the monarchy in the 1700s, we are most likely to start school in September just like our ancestors’ children in the United Kingdom do.
And because it's the correct time to go back to school.
Before taking into account when one should start summer vacation, one can make the case that September is the perfect time to start the new school year by looking at one of the world’s oldest religions. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, and depending on the year it falls in September in the Gregorian calendar. One of the traditions around the high holiday is dipping apples in honey. And there’s no better time to dip the apples in honey than September as it brings forth a bounty of them especially along the Hudson Valley.
The first week of September greets Galas - one of my preferred bites - and meets Macintoshes - perfect for pies and crumbles. These are followed by Cortlands and Crimson Crisps, Jonathan, Frostbite and Bellas. My favorite - Honeycrisp - comes next before the Empire, Macoun, and Fujis round out September's pull among others. Sure, October brings cooler temperatures and with them an ability to comfortably pick in a heavy flannel and yes, there are additional varieties that meet their ripeness only with the change of the calendar. But who wants to be left picking a Red Delicious, taking a bite of something with at least half the description wrong in the process?
Every season has its highlights and every month therein its peaks and valleys to denote the passing of time. The preparation for big days on the calendar in the weeks ahead - the decorating, costume idea generating and creating, ahead of Halloween; the shopping just after Thanksgiving for Christmas gifts; the summer vacations planned months ahead of that beach rental - do their job in expanding the joy those events provide: it's not just the day itself, but the days and weeks before. Yet inevitably as the big day or event concludes the feelings turn bittersweet either at the end to the day itself - a resounding success now in the past - or the day not living up to one's expectation. But for reasons that will become clear, this tends not to be the case for September.
"All the months are crude experiments, out of which the perfect September is made." - Virginia Woolf (who's afraid of her anyway?)
I cannot recall a September that hasn't fulfilled its dutiful place on the calendar. Technically some of that duty starts in August with Back to School - the only BTS fight the crowds for - shopping starts. I recall our annual trips to Staples in Milford, Connecticut, shopping lists in hand, to procure our Trapper Keepers for elementary and middle school before graduating to Mead Five Star notebooks, college-lined of course despite us being high schoolers. I always felt like wide-ruled notebooks were for girls, their naturally curly-q letters needing a larger line to act as a canvas, a man's more concise, structured, formal writing best served by the shorter rule.
Ticonderoga Number 2 pencils were the only real option, not only for the Scan-Tron scored standardized tests we took but for their classic slender yellow body with green lettering and their green-gold-green striped ferrule. Yellow, hot pink, lime green and sky blue were the colors of our highlighters. Our pens - both blue and black - were made just down the Boston Post Road by Bic. It would be the second or third week of September when I'd chew through my first pen cap affixed to the non-writing end of the pen. Pen cap busted, the pen was likely to dry out or bleed in my Leon Leonwood Bean double-Main(e) pocketed backpack with my three initials embroidered - JWK - and replaced or repaired free of charge by the supplier when damaged. Unlike others who no longer stick by their quality, they still stood by it as recently as two years ago when my youngest daughter's backpack zipper was stuck, sending us a new one before we even returned the old one. And when I called, an actual human responded, in a human way with equal parts humor and humility.
My wife and I list the things that need to get done or be purchased before school starts next month. The last few weeks of August are filled with anticipation and preparation. Unlike Home Depot and Lowes that start putting out decorations for Christmas before Halloween, these last few weeks of August are the perfect amount of time to work one's way through the supplies list and find a few new outfits for the year ahead.
List in hand and with my wife away in Montreal for a long weekend, I get my daughters excited for the Saturday we have ahead of us: after some time at the gym, I would take them to Target for school supplies and new clothes, to DSW for up to $150 worth of shoes a piece, to Panera for lunch and onto Dick's Sporting Goods for some Nike socks and Nike shorts. Other than a stop at Staples for the items not found at Target, and a return to Staples due to our inability to find (and my reluctance to ask for the whereabouts of) the TI-34 during our first trip, we return home nearly six hours later with a trunk-load of pencils - normal and color - pens, paper, folders, binder dividers, composition notebooks, one D-shaped 3-ring binder, hundreds of notecards and post-it notes; with shorts and sweatpants and t-shirts and sweatshirts and socks and shoes - including a pair of Puma Super LIGAs for myself.
Sure, we could have bought all of this from Amazon, had it shipped to our door, and freed up the bulk of the Saturday to do something else. But would that have elicited the excitement of getting the last Sesame Street t-shirt in the store (ironically, returned a few days later); would it have caused the tears - multiple rounds of them - when I asked my daughter to try on the cloths first, causing her to text my wife to complain about how horrible a father I am; would it have made that same daughter laugh when I joked about how trying it on was the right decision after she decided to put that garment back (whose father would later be vindicated when she later returned a different shirt that she didn’t try on); would it have brought multiple thank yous from each daughter throughout the day; would it have made me smile as I looked over at my oldest in the front passenger seat as she told a joke to her sister as she sat in the backseat? No.
As a child, September brought with it the Fall Sports season. There were those first few days of Cross Country practice, miles that were hot as the last few days of summer which they still were. I still recall those first pasta parties, held at the upper classmen houses while I was still just a few days into my Freshman year. Unlike other sports that were separated by boys and girls with practices and game days further separated by varsity and junior varsity, other than a few meets, we all practiced, mingled over spaghetti the night before, and traveled together to the Saturday morning meets around the state. As the temperatures would start to drop in the waning days of September and some of the leaves would start to change in Wickham Park at the northern end of our state, we would warm up together, loosening up the legs, calming the nerves with a few inside jokes, point out the girls we were crushing, and cheer on our teammates in the junior varsity and girls races before they'd cheer us on.
September meant Friday Night Lights. Home games at the Surf Club saw our town line up and pay the $3 to the boosters to get in to watch our Tigers take it to the competition. We never had a losing season in any of my memories. I was there on the gridiron, albeit only during the halftime show, saxophone in hands, lower lip on reed, upper teeth divoting the top of my mouthpiece, Q-tip-like hat on my head, white spats on my black shoes. Away games saw us travel by yellow school bus across the state, though never longer than an hour, but that hour filled with stolen conversations with one's seat mate that would evolve from the class clown trumpeter of 1995 to one's flute-playing and fellow runner girlfriend of 1998.
September brought the Durham Fair, a local staple that saw tractor pulls, massive pumpkins and vegetables, funnel cakes and both apples and cotton candied, and in 2005, Gin Blossoms playing on the main stage where they opened and closed their eight song set with Hey Jealousy. I went just about every year as a kid, and as an early adult, I would venture south from Hartford to attend. I've even taken the kids since moving to New York, checking the musical acts in early summer (.38 Special will have guests holding on loosely on the main stage this year). If fair weekend didn’t collide with the Soundside Music Festival I'm going to with my daughter, a funnel cake or two would have been in our future to close out September.
September brings with it a different set of sounds. The murmur of the buses heading down the street will start the fifth of the month in our city. As the neighborhood kindergartners head off to their first day of school, the cries of the children like the thunder combined with the tears that streak like lightning from a late summer thunderstorm as parents wave and shout their love as the buses pull away, while doing their best to hold back their own tears. They will fail.
"We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer's wreckage. We will welcome summer's ghost." - Henry Rollins (yes, that Henry Rollins)
There will be the sound of silence present in my home office as my own children head back to school, an increase in concentration brought by the end to summer. The quiet will last until the high school buses make their way down my street, across the yard and sidewalk, 30 feet from my desk chair. The decibels will increase as my oldest walks in the door, a welcomed break to the sound of one man typing in Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Mail or Calendar. Those first few weeks filled with joyful hellos and welcome homes before the first frustration: a school assignment missed, a test underperformed, a friend being anything but.
September's soundtrack is one of melancholia, a contrast to the bacchanalia hailed by Alice Cooper's School's Out to kick off the summer a few months ago, which is fitting: people aspire to summer - to some, a verb - but Labor Day brings back our collective anxieties of summer reading lists not read, of new classrooms to enter and classmates to meet, of a return to productive work with fewer vacations to interrupt progress and productivity, preceding the coming shorter days and colder temperatures. Frank Sinatra's The September of my Years finds him crooning a reflection on the stage of life he was in: a little bit older, with less to look forward to than to look back upon. Green Day's Wake me Up When September Ends,1 a somber song from the American Idiots about the loss of a friend. Neil Diamond's September Morn about a summer's love lost. But at this time of year, I look not to a song about September (though Earn Wind and Fire's song of the same name is as great as any to lift one’s spirits) but to Death Cab for a Cutie's New Year. The opening words resonate more for me as we welcome September than as we turn the calendar anew: So this is the new year?
This month filled with the new routines of school, the added structure a firm backbone as the kids all age up together, like a communal birthday shared by all but without cake, paper and presents. The shorter days - still long enough to enjoy an after work or school activity with an audience of a setting sun, friends and loved ones - create an added sense of urgency of time slipping past and a sharp reminder that there are only four months left of the calendar year to complete the goals you set back in January.
No. This is the new year.
"Happily we bask in this warm September sun, which illuminates all creatures." - Henry David Thoreau
This is the time for a new set of goals to be created, for new habits and rituals and routines we want to start while there is more daylight, not like the dark days of January, where all we want is to huddle by the fire with a book. September brings with it the Harvest Moon - the Neil Young album of the same name making its case for inclusion among September songs - on the 17th, so named because it's the closest to the autumnal equinox, the traditional harvest period, which serves as the perfect canvas to seek out a new North Star(t). My wife and I compare lists of actions we want to start to take this month: adding dance and Spanish lessons while eliminating Amazon deliveries for her; creating more connection in person and via phone (not text or FaceTime), getting involved in the community and not buying a single book or vinyl record2 for me; volunteering with seniors, eating a little healthier for the two of us; eating dinner as a family - at an actual table - a few days a week for the four of us. And we’re not alone: While summer sees half-attended group classes at my gym, I’ve seen an increase in full classes and in waits lists for the first week of September ahead just like those New Year’s Resolutioners filling January classes.
Yes, the leaves on the trees will start to fulfill their season (fall) this month. The seasonal signs of decay will litter the yard, the seasonal scents of dry leaves and the smoke from outdoor fires will find the nose, the sounds of the birds shifting to the delayed sunrises and accelerated sunsets while others' songs will be absent until next year, this year's fall migration already approaching its peak. While the 13- and 17-year broods will have died off in July3, the annual cicadas born in mid-Summer will have by September ceased their synchronized swatch-like cadence of chirps.
September is a season of change. If March is in like a lion, and out like a lamb, September starts with summer's hot humid day, a feeling not unlike a mealy Macintosh apple and ends with fall's cool nights, like biting into a Honeycrisp.
"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
There are two reasons why Karl Ove Knausgaard's seasonal books to his unborn daughter starts with Autumn,4 the first being obvious: he needed to start it before she was due to be born. The second is autumn's appropriate place as the true start of the year as aforementioned. September's harvest complete, the fields are tilled and prepared - reset, if you will - ahead of the fallowing Winter days to preserve the ground for the growth of Spring and the bounty of Summer. Frank should not have looked at the September of his days and regretted what was left behind but welcomed what was still ahead of him.
William Wordsworth, in his poem September, 1819 - 205 years ago - would have concurred, seeing the mirror of spring in the ascending autumn days, beginning,
Departing summer hath assumed An aspect tenderly illumed, The gentlest look of spring; That calls from yonder leafy shade Unfaded, yet prepared to fade, A timely carolling.
As night falls a little earlier, the lightning bugs that brought great joy during the twilights of July and August will no longer fire. The only sparks that will fly through the night sky are those from the fire pit, the meteors that track across the ever expanding universe above, and the fading, distant heat lightning of a late summer storm.
We recall singing the Days of the Month during our elementary school days. It starts with September and its 30 days and its Latin root Sept, meaning 7 despite it being the ninth month of the Gregorian calendar. But framing it as the 7th month, we can imagine it being the start of back half of the year, letting us make up for the bogies and three putts on the out journey with some pars and maybe even a birdie or two on the in journey to come.
About those 30 days. All but one of the top 10 most common birthdays in the United States fall in September.5 When you do the math, that time between Thanksgiving and New Year's - the actual one - is a fruitful one filled with sowed oats. It happens in the cold of winter, something that September starts to prepare one for with its cooler nights and mornings.
And like the holidays, there is part of me that wishes September would last the whole year. But I’m quick to remember this would take away from the cadence and renewal afforded as the calendar turns, making it less special. It's one of the reasons why we couldn't get our lives in California to stick: we gave it the old college try 13 (!) Septembers ago, but there's something off-putting about the weather being more or less the same every day of the year. It gets boring, rote, ridiculous.
As it turns out, we are still living in what the Internet types would still call an Eternal September. Back before the Internet was ubiquitous - whose soundtrack for which I would make the exception to allow Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days - September brought with it college students and their Usenet accounts which would increase with each incoming Freshman class in a step-wise manner. That all changed when America Online launched in March 1994 (a great year for just about everything6) using the same Usenet protocols, causing Internet denizens to describe September 1993 as the start of Eternal September. They even took to wearing shirts that read "The Internet is Full. Go away!" Sound advice then; even more so now.
"Wine is the divine juice of September." - Voltaire (though this dude will not imbibe)
This past week of August, I have taken to getting up at or before 5am a few days to prepare my body and mind for the shorter, more-filled days ahead. Good habits and sound actions are best taken when pressed for time, prioritizing what matters, just like back in September 2011 when my oldest daughter was just a few months old, and I looked at her, and realized that now was the time I needed put on a pair of running shoes and start focusing on my health, after wasting the March and April of my youth as a single, unencumbered man.
My wife’s students return to school today; our children return on Thursday. She’s taken to teaching science for the lower school this year; our children start the last of their middle school and elementary school years. We have the whole month of September ahead of us, with leaves falling like the sands of an hour glass, to start anew. New clothes and new school supplies for the kids, new perspectives and new frameworks for the adults, new schedules for all of us.
And should we get to the 30th and realize we're without progress, this year we can give ourselves a few more days: Rosh Hashanah doesn't start until sundown on October 2nd. Another perfect time to start again.
[Editor’s Note: While this may surprise the reader, the James Baldwin quote to start this piece was not found until after this piece was written. It was referenced in a Tracksmith running journal for the month of September, and felt too perfectly poignant to leave out, despite feelings of contrivance in the writer.]
It will be 20 years the 21st oft his month since it came out.
Pre-ordered books and vinyl that may arrive in the mail this month do not count.
And those in Illinois and Iowa would have heard both sets and partied like it was 1803, the last time both broods aligned, prime factors and all.
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July 7 is the other date in the Top 10.
Except books.