September Again

It’s September again.

Everyone around me is mourning summer and rehearsing the return to school. I roll my eyes. As if we ever stopped learning.

May through August is the season of taking our foot off the gas. Endless light. Permission to drift.

Then September arrives and the question becomes: do we go faster now?

Pumpkin spice signs are already up. Give us a break, Howard. I’m still on iced tea. I do not like to be rushed.

The milk I bought today expires in October. People are trading costume ideas. Don’t they know they’re already wearing them?

An email from the firm announces the December holiday party. I hear jokes that the year is over, that we might as well start writing /27 in the corner of the page.

Why can’t they see that it is only September again?

I know the ones who can. My Virgos.

I get to celebrate the days some of my favorite people arrived. I don’t believe in astrology, but they are all such Virgos. Virtuous. Steadfast.

I write them the most serious birthday cards.

I click my pen: To another 365 days that are out of your control. Take a deep breath. You’re a Virgo. When will you learn that your ducks are already in a row?

Thank God for September, or we wouldn’t have them. Thank God for them, or the world might look like a mess.

I go to the farmers market and watch Mother Nature open the chest she brought back from her pilgrimage.

I savor the last tomatoes and, before we part, get on my knees and ask why must you taste so bad the rest of the year?

I greet the apples and ask what makes one of them so special that someone decided it could keep us from the doctor forever.

I pick up a Honeycrisp, take a bite, and think: of course. You slick bastard.

I tell the peaches to keep trying. It wasn’t their fault I didn’t have a good one this summer. It was the farmer who reaped what he sowed. Maybe he needs a new needle and thread.

Shall we learn what’s in the soil before we’re all dead?

The light changes. Everything turns gold around six, as if the sun finally let her hair down after keeping it in a ponytail all summer. It was hot. She worked overtime.

She goes to bed earlier. The moon joins me for supper while I eat outside around eight. I’m not that European.

I wear my lightest sweater with my favorite loose jeans, laugh over a good meal and a bottle of Lambrusco.

I raise my glass: Hear, hear. To not making it to Burning Man this year. The time will be right when it is.

Will it?

Both my sweater and my jeans are cream. I wear them well past the first Monday in September, just so someone can stop me and say “You know you can’t wear white after Labor Day.”

I break the fourth wall.

“Get a load of this guy. He still goes by the Gregorian calendar.”

My sweater is still linen. Cashmere waits for October.

There are rules to breaking rules.

I might even wear my blue light glasses, just to play the part.

It’s back to school season, after all. We’re learning again.

I pick up new books so I can understand what new words mean. I’m writing the story of my life. I may as well know the good ones.

They’re glued to their phones. I’m hooked on phonics. We’re both paying attention.

Do we know what it costs?

Enough that one day you look up and think: holy shit.

It’s September again?

That’s the trouble with always reading ahead.

You miss the page you’re on.

And I love this one.

I draw a heart in my notebook.

In it: Annika + World

What a September.

Again.