The song "Try to Remember," from The Fantasticks (music by Harvey Schmidt, book and lyrics by Tom Jones), asks us to "try to remember the kind of September/ when life was slow and oh so mellow." For me, September is not mellow--it has always had a brisk, back-to-school, new beginnings type of feeling. I love the scene in You’ve Got Mail where Meg Ryan asks Tom Hanks (by e-mail), “Don’t you love autumn in New York?” and his reply is about bouquets of sharpened pencils. New notebooks, new textbooks, and new routines are all part of the get-moving tradition of fall.
And yet, amid the bustle, there is a mellow, seasonal "kindness" about September--the relief from the heat of July and August, a promise of autumnal peace, cool nights after sunny days. Already there are splashes of orangey-red, visible out my kitchen window at the very tops of the mountains: the front range of the Wasatch is "tatting out glimpses of autumn-leave lace," as I wrote in a poem long ago. Soon the splashes will softly link and drape halfway down the mountain on some cold, rainy night. Perhaps a cap of snow will perch on the peaks.
September is a plan for an even mellower autumn to come. Check the cupboard for supplies of cinnamon and chocolate; air the quilts; admire the pumpkin in the garden; line up a shelf of books to read or read again. Seek the truths of preparation and conservation. Store up a new kind of energy, powered not by sun but by blazing leaves and soft embers.
Remember.
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