Always In September
Western New Year is January 1st, and Chinese New Year falls somewhere between the end of January and early February, but my calendar always seems to reset in September. As Richard Gilmore of Gilmore Girls once said, “I am an autumn.”
I love summer in Maine as much as the next girl, but what starts as a season of optimism always takes a turn around mid-July. I can’t stand the heat and everyone’s clamoring to travel and do something special every weekend and then I blink and it’s August and I’ve only been to the beach once and that means I’m not making the most of summer and therefore I’m a failure.
Then, one random day in August, the weather turns; the humidity dies down and the sun isn’t quite as bright and there’s a breeze in the evening that smells like nostalgia. Back-to-school supplies show up in the stores and some days you can even get away with wearing jeans. The momentum of life slows in anticipation of the more staid, routine months to come. This is when I start to take stock of the past year and reflect on what’s happened since last fall.
Summer flings are as inevitable as mosquito bites, and much like the season, they start hopeful and exciting but usually end in a puddle of sweat, sunscreen and tears. My best fling was a summer camp love triangle — a tradition as quintessential to a Maine childhood as red snappers in the backyard.
There were two brothers: the older one tall, dark and handsome; the younger one tall, blonde and boyish. The former was the object of my heat-stroke daydreams, but the latter was into me. Guess who I chose.
We shared longing glances across the field of picnic tables and made sure we were always in the same canoe. We sat side-by-side at bonfire nights and felt our bodies sway in sync to old camp songs. After hours we’d go to the Dairy Queen down the road and he’d buy me a Blizzard, then we’d make out in the back of his mother’s minivan. We rejoiced in the sweet, innocent bubble of summertime, two youngsters frolicking in the forest, completely devoid of adult supervision.
Then September came. You can try to force summer flings into the fall, just like you can try to force the last tomatoes of the season to ripen, but you’ll only end up with sour fruit.
I spent that fall at his parents’ house, reading art history textbooks and writing papers about The Odyssey and The Picture of Dorian Grey while he filled out college applications and edited the short film he was making for admissions departments, instead of writing the traditional essay, because he wanted to be a director. His older brother would visit on weekends and I’d listen as he’d thump around in his room upstairs, imagining him reading paperbacks and ironing his shirts.
They lived in Cumberland, so every September he watched the Cumberland Fairgrounds transform from a patch of dirt to a bustling festival with animals and rides and all the rest. He researched the fair’s history and interviewed some of the farmers and volunteers. We went to the fair at least three times that September so he could get footage. The admissions staff of college film programs across the country watched the short “Always In September” that year and saw me on the merry-go-round, me petting a goat, me throwing darts at balloons.
I loved being his muse, but he wasn’t content being my director. As the weather got colder and his future loomed larger, the bright spotlight of summer love dimmed, the cameras panned out and he called cut!
Maine turns sepia-toned every autumn, the ground covered with the shock of orange leaves blown off their branches. You can leave them there over winter, letting them fester and feed the earth below, hiding the bugs and unmentionables, but even after the snow falls you’ll know they’re there, waiting for you to clean them up when spring finally arrives. Or you can rake them into a messy pile, stuff them into a thick paper bag with the rest of the brush, and leave them on the curb to be picked up and taken away.
Emma Chance also writes The Overshare at emmachance.substack.com.
