September Begins: Changing Seasons and Life Assessments, Reunions with Old Friends, and Back to Work

September Sunflowers

September Begins: Changing Seasons and Life Assessments

It’s the first day of September, which brings with it a lot of changes. A lot of us start to think about work after more leisurely summer days. Our local lavender farm closed yesterday, getting ready to shift to become a pumpkin farm at the end of the month. The weather today was bright and 85°F, unseasonably warm, but the days are noticeably shorter than they were a month ago. The gardens—my own and others around town—are in their last bright, ragged days, rampant and moving towards the end of their flowering. I admit to a fondness for September over August, usually a time of looking forward, to holidays, to a new year, a time of hope?

Waxwing in flight

A Facebook “memory” brought up something that caused me to do a brief life assessment—it was a blog post from about six years ago, when I was 45. The post was angry, frustrated, obviously a person who was struggling with many things in her life. Now six years later, I wonder why I was so angry. Of course, I had had a terminal liver cancer diagnosis the year before, and then an MS diagnosis—two things so devastating, and complicated by the fact that I have friends that still to this day have not called me since those two events (losing friends is tough, but I guess those weren’t real friends, as my mother would have said to me in eighth grade). The terminal diagnosis was wrong, at least a little premature, though I still have a liver full of tumors, and the MS diagnosis was wrenching, though years of physical, vestibular, speech therapies have helped a lot of the symptoms. I was frustrated by what I felt like was a stagnant writing career, full of frustrated ambition. (It could also have been the beginning of perimenopause, often punctuated by mood swings.) One good thing about blogs is that they capture a certain moment in time, in your life. Was I feeling lucky that we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, that I could go to the movies or dentist relatively freely? No, I was not. Ah, hindsight.

Hello deer neighbor!

At 51, I wish I could tell my previous self about what was to come: the pandemic and all it would change, the fact that I would make new friends (and renew old friendships unexpectedly), that my marriage would improve, that my writing career might not be rocketing towards stardom but feels like enough to me these days. (I did have a book come out to some success, some good reviews, appearances in Poetry Magazine and Poetry Daily that bolstered my confidence, among other things. But also, a shift in mindset about what constitutes “enough” success?) That I would build connections to my community (and a pretty decent garden) during the covid years. That though things aren’t perfect, I no long feel as frustrated in my daily life. My health isn’t perfect, but my dental hygienist commented on how much better I was doing physically than five years ago, which caused me to wonder—what is she noticing that I haven’t about improvements in my overall well-being? I’m no longer in a wheelchair all the time, many of my MS symptoms are less acute, I’ve been getting treatment for more of my weirdo stuff. I lost weight during the last four years and increased my bone density, not usual at 51! I feel grateful for these positive changes, though sometimes they’re so gradual you might not remark on them.

Dr. Kathy McCue and me

Reunions with Old Friends, and Back to Work

I got to see an old friend (my best friend from fifth grade!) who is an ER doc living in Alaska doing all kinds of amazing charity work, and we caught up over brunch with our partners. It’s so funny, because I know we are both older intellectually, but I still see her as the tall, red-haired girl in fifth grade, a little awkward, just as I was at that age. It’s kind of like going to a high school reunion and goes along with my theme of life assessments—when you see old friends who knew you when you were a kid, you also remember the paths you’ve both taken—and the ones you didn’t take. Like many of my friends from Tennessee and Cincinnati, we didn’t ever stay where we were put, and I like to think we’ve achieved some of the ambitions we had as our younger selves.

September also reminds us to get back to our regular routines and, yes, that involves maybe more attention to details, accounts, work. I have a tutorial to do and I’m trying to write new poems, work on a manuscript for my publisher, manage my social media (I got spoofed on Insta and Facebook this week, which was no fun), and send work to the lit mags that re-open on September 1 or thereabouts.

While summer is a good time to reflect and remember, fall is a good time to refocus and try to put energy into the things that are important to you. Sign up for that dental cleaning, put on a face mask, donate some old clothing or clean out the pantry, read that book you’ve been putting off, because it’s September! It may not be sweater weather yet, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get out my notebooks and sharpen my (metaphorical) pencils, so I’m ready.