Column: Mellow time arrives with September
The apples, plucked from the tree, and from the squirrels and rabbits, are in a dark room in the basement.
We call that room “purgatory” because the items in there have served us well and in time we hope to pass them along to another life with another family. The apples will indeed become heavenly mouthfuls of apple crisps and apple pies this fall.
We have but one pumpkin on the vine, which, in spite of being a potted plant, grew huge leaves that took up too much space on our patio. We are carefully tending to that pumpkin in hopes that it might become jack-o-lantern size for our smallest grandchild.
For some of us September is a mellow time that celebrates a great summer with memorials of ciders and canned tomatoes. For others it is when things begin: new organizer pages, school outfits, Big Ten tablets, yellow No. 2 pencils, and a perfect box of unbroken crayons. Appointment calendars and Blackberrys are updated with book clubs, writing clubs, Bible study groups, exercise classes and most of all, school.
For some of us the beginning of school means the return to routines. For others it is more poignant. I watch the young mother across the street peek from her hiding place behind the drapes to make sure her little boy (the “I-can do-it-myself” kid) catches the bus.
This is his first year of school. He leans forward a little, seeking a center of gravity for the backpack he proudly carries. I don’t see a lunch pail. No Roy Rogers or Lone Ranger metal container to carry peanut butter and strawberry jam smeared between two slices of smashed Wonder Bread. No air-filled Twinkies to trade for a homemade cupcake. I hear the schools serve breakfasts now so my little neighbor probably gets what I used to pine for – “hot lunches.”
It is for sure that September foreshadows changes, and even some endings. The sun rises a little later and a little lower each morning. Soon there will be little reason to lift up the shades in the morning. Twilight begins to separate families as children are called in from their play and adults have almost completed their seasonal yard work.
In my childhood neighborhood, the adults devised clever ways to let us know we had to come in the house. Some blew whistles or rang hand bells. My mother turned on the porch light when it was time for me to come in from the games of hide-and-seek and kick-the-can, but as I frequently claimed, if I was hiding, I didn’t know the light was on.
On weekends, we stayed out until the last rays of the absent sun filtered light across the prairie and shadows flitting among bare cottonwood trees became monsters waiting for October’s Halloween. It was then that we searched for the biggest and best pumpkin to snatch from the neighbor’s patch.
Used to be folks could burn leaves they raked from their yards and that autumn aroma cannot be found in the best of candles. Used to be those same folks lingered at the fire and watched the tiny tendrils of smoke drift into the night sky before they retreated to their winter homes where they began addressing holiday cards that would substitute for the handshakes of September.
(Carol Holoboff is a former Libby resident who now writes her column from Great Falls).