September Song

My father always said that, after the Fourth of July, the summer was pretty much over. We, his kids, are always citing this - starting on the Fifth of July, and we hold the truthiness of this belief to be self evident. Because it is completely the truth that, after a slow buildup from Memorial Day to the Fourth, once the fireworks have sputtered out, summer just flies.

And that's okay with me.

There are a few things I like about summer. 

• The light in the evening. I'll be more than happy when Daylight Savings Time becomes a permanent calendar feature.
• The late summer flowers: zinnias, dahlias, marigolds. Sure, I like spring flowers, too. Who doesn't welcome tulips and jonquils? And mums in the fall, and poinsettias at Christmas. But there's something about those August flowers.
• Native tomatoes.
• Native corn.
• And summer fruit, especially nectarines, blueberries, and cherries.
• Baseball is still on. Admittedly, it you're a Red Sox fan, that's not such a great and glorious thing this year. Still...

But of all the seasons, to me summer comes in dead last. The other three seasons? They're in a dead heat for first place. (Yes, even winter. I'm a New Englander of German and Irish heritage. Bad weather is in my blood.)

So I welcome September, even if most of it, technically, takes place in summer.

When I was a kid, nerd child that I was, I looked forward to September and getting back to school.

A new pencil box. A new schoolbag (if last year's edition was now in shreds). A new pair of shoes. (Alas, no new clothing. Same old, same old, green jumper and white blouse. Year in, year out. And my school uniform, year in, year out - until high school, when I outgrew her - was a hand-me-down from my sister Kath.)

I loved the anticipation of getting to know the new nun. This was always a crapshoot, the triumph of hope over reason. But you never knew. She might be one of the good ones, and not a raging psycho. 

I would already have met the new nun, as mid-August, after the Feast of the Assumption, it was the tradition for the "good girls" to drift down to school to help Sister Sister set up her classroom. Sometimes, the nun might be the same nun who'd taught your new grade last year, so you at least knew her by reputation. But "our" order of nuns believed in mixing things up, trading nuns every year or so, I guess so that the nuns wouldn't get too comfortable, too familiar, too friendly with the kids, their parents, and - gulp: heaven forbid - another nun in the convent where they were stationed.

Much as my mother adored nuns and priests, she used to complain when Kath and I put on a skirt and headed down with our friends to Our Lady of the Angels to check out who was back, who was new. If you want so badly to help out, you can help out around the house. As if! There was nothing all that new and exciting at our house. (Okay, the summer before fifth grade there was a new baby, which was pretty cool.) And it's not as if we (that would be Kath and I) didn't do plenty to help out. Unlike my brothers, who barely lifted a pampered finger.

So, off to paying a call at the convent, to pick up the new nun and get into the classroom to dust desks or whatever. 

After we'd sussed out the new lay of the land, it was just a couple of weeks until school started.

School!

I loved covering the new text books. Sometimes they handed out freebies from a bread company, manila with red and brown writing. Bread is the staff of life. Sometimes we had to make our own out of brown paper grocery bags. And, once and only once, I sprung for a package of fancy ones from Woolworth's. They were shiny college book covers: Holy Cross Crusaders. Villanova Wildcats. Fordham Rams. And - odd man out: a  non-Catholic school - Penn State Nittany Lions.

I loved getting homework, even though it was always Mickey Mouse make work. I loved sitting there at the kitchen table, copying those spelling words, whipping through the arithmetic "problems." If you were doing homework, you couldn't be asked to retrieve the laundry from the clothesline, or peel apples for applesauce for dinner.

September. Ah, September.

Sweater weather (even though it could be hot).

The first trip to Brookfield Orchards for a bushel of Macs.

And as much as I love summer light, by September I was ready for the dimming of the day.

Football was on, and while I'm not much of a football fan now, as a kid, I always went to a couple of Holy Cross games. As a little kid, with my father. As I got older, with my friends. We'd walk the couple of miles to campus, watch The Cross play, sing "Mamie Riley" and "Give Another Hoya", and then trudge home. (By the time I was going with my girlfriends, it was as much to look at the cute college boys as it was to watch football.)

On Sundays, I watched professional football with my father. Pre-Patriots, that meant the New York Football Giants, wearing "Honolulu Blue." We didn't have a colored TV, so we had to take the announcer's word for it.

It's been a million years since September meant back to school. A million years since I cared about football.

But I'm still looking forward to sweater weather, the early Macintosh apples. And there is still the anticipation, the September-ness of this month being the actual beginning of a new year. 

I'm not particularly sorry to see summer wind down.

Welcome, September. What took you so long?