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So many Septembers
LOML and I met in the summer. We were still students. Labour Day weekends, in the early days of our relationship, marked the end of our summer jobs and the beginning of preparations to head back to classes. Because we had until the middle of September for “serious” studies to start, we usually took off for a couple of weeks before heading into school. Camping was our getaway adventure of choice. It was inexpensive, out-of-doors, and relaxing. The best part about vacationing in September was the regular folks had gone back to their September lives and the Provincial Parks were just about empty. I like to think we invented the “shoulder season” of tourism in Ontario. And here I sit writing about back-to-school and September, on the first day of September. When I think of all of my favourite seasons, September is my first choice. Yeah, I know September isn’t a season.
September. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, “Where did July and August go?” It purely amazes me how quickly the lazyhazy days of “summer” fly by now that LOML and I are simply young-at-heart. I remember being a little kid, sitting in a hot June classroom, watching the clock behind the teacher’s desk, thinking the bell would never ring. The bell for recess, the bell for lunch, the bell to head home for the summer months. The hours used to creep by when I wanted to be skipping or riding my bike or camping with the family or playing “move-ups” at the local baseball diamond or even weeding the vegetable garden for my mom. Anything would have been better than sitting in a classroom and listening to a teacher drone on about long division or dangling participles or radishes and goose berries. Summer days, when I was a kid, lasted forever. Everything was new, exciting and challenging. How long would it take to make Mom break down and let us spray each other with the hose? How long would it take a bunch of us to ride from Strathburn Park to Italian Gardens on our bicycles? How long before Mom realized we had been swimming in the “brick pond”? How far could we ride our bikes “no hands”? How many books could I trick the Bookmobile lady into letting me take home? How many “fireballs and licorice pipes and wax lips” could we get at Pop’s for the Coke bottles we found by Mason’s Gas Station? How many little yellow butterflies could we catch in a jam jar?
Today, the first day of September 2019, I wonder how many people are heading back to their homes to get ready for “back-to-school” or “back-to-work”. When we came to the County in 1972, September was back-to- school/work for LOML and for the next three decades (and a bit), the last week of August and the first days of September were a reminder of lessons to be planned, attendance to be taken, student names to memorize and switching out the flip flops, T-shirts and shorts for socks and shoes, long pants with a dress shirt and a tie and bells to remind you to take a break, eat your lunch, dismiss your class. But today, we’ll be preparing for a first day back to the grind with cup of coffee on the side porch, listening for the United Church bells to chime at nine. Maybe we’ll try to figure out how long it will take to cycle to the brewery in Wellington for lunch or get to the beach at Sandbanks or see how many books we can check out of the library. Maybe on Tuesday we’ll see how many Flat Whites we can buy with the refunds from the empties we found out by the pool.
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