This September
The gift of this month is we can learn to savor more than just our gardens.
We leave the lake in our rear view mirror after a day of sun, cool fresh water covering our skin, and feeling the heat deep in our bodies. The kids’ hands grapple for snacks over the seats to offset their lack of interest in the lunches I had packed. Eating meals, also known as snacks, has been the way most of the summer. Meals are hard to hit correctly with a schedule that is always changing, and I have started embracing it for better or worse.
The windows of our 4-runner are rolled down, even the one in the very back, and I try to soak in one of the last hot days of summer. My hair, still damp from dipping under the freshwater lake’s surface, cooled the heat of our extra hot summer days from the blood coursing through my body that reminds me I am alive. The cool air will soon blow in after a storm, and I will be glad we soaked in this feeling of magic.
The floor of the car is sand-covered. My sandals still have sand stuck to them from the many beach trips that made up our summer. My skin tells a story of beach days through tan lines where my bathing suit sat on my shoulders. My hair dries in the wind rushing through the car that smells of cedar and fresh water. I secretly desire not to wash it for a few days, so it keeps the promise of these days with me, like the memories that will be written in our story as a family. Not washing my hair feels as if I am holding this summer season longer than will be allowed.
I capture this image of us all right now in my mind like a Polaroid image I will place on my mental bulletin board. The squeals from the youngest, who refused to get dressed after stripping her wet suit off, and the oldest singing his favorite song at the top of his lungs. Is this the last time we will make a weekend beach run this year where the warm air makes the now cool flipped lake feel like a gift? I don't know. Nothing in life is ever promised—even this. Instead, I hold it. I smell it. I taste it. I savor it. The golden tones of August have faded into the frame of September, and our month of fruition has now led us to feel we must savor these final weeks of summer. Just three weeks of it is what September gives us, and what a gift those three weeks are to live in the present.
Every year, September begins in one place and ends in another. This picture of sandy toes, sweat, ripening tomatoes, tank tops, sandals, and beach days is where we will start, but our lives and routines will be dramatically different when we end the month. Life shifts and changes in just a few weeks of this month, and it can feel like we warped through time and space in a blink.
We have other months in the year that act as the transitions. March transports us from winter to spring. June brings us from spring to summer, and December culminates fall to enter winter. These months that transition us are essential, but September is when the changes are rapidly noticeable through the landscape, in ourselves, and in our routines. Every other one is softer in its transition, but September will be the one that shows just how quickly everything can change. Our gardens will slow and fade into fall, and the wild, carefree nature of barefoot mornings in the garden will not carry into the next month. Somehow, this month begins with our feet in the water and ends with them in boots and socks. September's gift is that this transition teaches us something crucial: how to savor life.
Savoring is about more than just saving things to place on a shelf. Though my tomatoes are being saved and put into the freezer for January, and dried herbs are being saved for winter tea, it is also about being aware of the changes we are navigating. So we do this by paying attention with our every sense to how something moves, talks, transitions, and more. After all, savoring is about being aware of the details of the present moment.
Learning to savor life properly is about something other than showing the good things. It is about being aware of how the beautiful and challenging are worthy of our awareness and how they change us. September is all about fading, and fading will lead us into the journey of letting go. We are constantly evolving, and this time of year allows us a dramatic view into that effect in our lives, whether it happens now or in another chapter of our lives. We can learn just how to make ourselves aware. How do we reflect and compare who we are now to who we were before and who we are becoming? Self-awareness is part of learning to savor. The realization is that nothing is ever stagnant in life; instead, it is constantly changing.
Thus, the question arises: How do we pay attention to this? It's relatively simple. Take a mental snapshot right this instance of the first few days of September. Everything from the clothes you are wearing to the shoes lying in the mudroom.
What comes in from the garden or fresh food from the farm market?
How did you spend your weekend?
What are you thinking about?
What feels important?
What feels far off?
What routines are you keeping?
What routines are you desiring and holding to?
Keep being curious about the life you know right now, whether physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual.
Pay attention, write it down, or snap a photo.
Now, week by week, keep this practice. Compare one week to another week. What are you seeing in this shift of you, the landscape, and your routines?
Everything will shift, and recollecting this same assessment of yourself and who you are right now against the version of you in the final days of September will speak a story of transition, change, and just how temporary this life is. Everything is changing right now, whether you are aware or not. It is beautiful and tragic how quickly it comes as if the very wind will not just paint the trees their true colors but may also do the same to us.
We cannot ever fully hold anything. It is all temporary, whether the good or the most challenging thing. It is what nature speaks the most of in what she teaches us. Constant transition is to be expected. Instead of fighting it or begging for it, find a way to savor the present, knowing it will never truly be that way again. Even who you are in this summer season will differ from the next. Every year and season offers its own brush strokes, even if the color palette is the same.
So, as I sit now in the sunlight of this hot day that is nearly stifling and that crisps the edges of the fields and garden, I snap an image of who I am right now. The reality of the good and the complicated melding, but also the picture of how I am dressed and feel. The sound of my kids fighting because they have had enough time together. The way my hair smells after the day in the lake. The way the light is warm and golden through the towering sunflowers and rudbeckia. The sound of every animal and bird gathering what they need and savoring just as I am. Who will I find at the end of this month that will enter into fall? Whoever I find, this version of me will be the transition to that one. Everything will find its way, but watching the story unfold along the way is such a gift.