Stay for the Season

Why I'm not saying goodbye to summer just yet (plus a reminder about my FREE virtual autumn equinox poetry event this month!)

Sep 12, 2024

The biggest Teddy Bear sunflower in Coolidge Corner, Brookline, MA

When I got out of bed this weekend, I put on fleece leggings for the first time this season. The apartment is just cool enough that the soft fuzziness of the leggings against my skin felt like a hug. I take my morning supplement and head outside to walk once around the block and get some morning sun in my eyes.

The air is crisper than it was last week, and I inhale a greedy gulp of September morning air. It is different somehow than August air, isn’t it? As I walk, I allow myself to start fantasizing about adding some pumpkin spice to my morning tea. By the time I round the block and unlock the door to my lobby, I am slightly flushed and starting to sweat. The leggings don’t hug so much as they stifle. It is then I realize why.

No matter that the retailers want us to believe, it’s still summer. Late summer, yes. But summer just the same. Fall is still what’s next. The calendar won’t officially roll over into the autumn equinox until the morning of September 22^nd at 8:43 am, to be exact.

I adore autumn; in fact, over the years, it’s risen in the ranks of the seasons I love. When it arrives, burnished and blushing alongside the first ripe Roxbury Russets, I’ll be singing its praises and scribbling sonnets in its honor. Admittedly, I am looking forward to weather that is suitable to wear the green, pink, and brown patterned corduroy skirt I found tucked away in a thrift shop in July (almost nothing gets me excited about a new season more than the food and the fashion it brings). It’s a little hard to wait. But I can. I want to.

August and September are connected like lovers, but there’s a rivalry that exists between them as well. A push and pull. One day we revel in the warmth that stains our palms pink as we cup a handful of the last of summer’s raspberries. The next, we long for woodsmoke and hot coffee and cinnamon and wool socks. Back and forth we go, like the tide trying to decide to come in or go out.

This time is full of back and forth, of readiness and reluctance to leave what has been behind, and desire and trepidation to step forward into what’s next. This dance is human, just as we are.

I’m experimenting this year with riding the summer season out until it shows me that it wants and needs to recede for good. The push to rush away everything having to do with one season and usher in everything else appropriate for the next is, well, a human desire.

I wonder though, in following my impulse to rush through these last couple of weeks of late summer, what I am scurrying to get through and get to in other parts of my life. If I insist on living in a way that doesn’t acknowledge the interdependence of us all, within the natural rhythms of our earth, what do I lose? When I refuse to stay with the seasons, how will I miss out on the singular and sacred experience of being a human being, of the earth?

Technically, it’s still summer, so strawberry earrings are still in season

Tom Waits is known to have said, “The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”

There’s an essay in my book The Perpetual Visitor: A Field Guide for Everyday Artists that explores this idea, and I reread the passage below this week as I continue to practice staying in this moment:

To be creative in a wild and wonderful world full of distractions both depressing and delightful demands that we practice focus and patience at every opportunity we have. We must dedicate ourselves to learning to have the ability to work at a task that might seem boring or tedious for hours on end. Yes, performing onstage is one of the best thrills of my life, but trying to memorize my lines? Not as fun. Taking a paintbrush to a blank canvas and letting our imaginations take over is exhilarating. Cleaning our brushes at the end and putting all our supplies away again? Not as exciting.

Dare to go all in. And while you are there, take the opportunity to be open to whatever that experience brings. You might just be surprised at what emerges for you once you are in that sweet state of flow.

I want to experience what it’s like to stay right here, as long as it lasts.

Despite having returned to school to begin teaching last week, I’m surrendering back into late summer before the tide goes out and fall comes to stay. I bought some gorgeous red raspberries and blackberries at my neighborhood farmer’s market last week and spent Sunday evening making a small batch of freezer jam from them. This way, come a cold January Saturday morning, when Boston is covered in snow, I will get to taste a little bit of this singular summer on my tongue with my morning toast.

I’m going to go back to the beach before the Atlantic takes on that particular chill that is more “Winter is coming” than not.

I’m a passionate picnicker and am grateful for the park up the street to host me for many more dinners this season. The sun will go down earlier than the evening before, but I’ll be there to catch what warmth is still wants to offer me.

If you’re someone who much prefers a change of season sooner rather than later, take heart. Fall is around the corner. It’s starting to wind its way into the leaves and flowers already, if you know where to look. That’s the sturdy thing about seasons: they always circle back. I don’t need to rush fall. It is already wending its way to me, to us, and will be all the sweeter for the waiting we do, when it does come to stay.

I’m not willing to waste the edges of any season: sun, snow, soil soaked from April rain, the way the dirt smells in late October, ready to once again host sleeping hyacinths until they are, once again, ready to awaken, almost as if responding to Orpheus’s call.

I lost a friend of mine from high school to brain cancer in 2015. A few years before she died, she posted this on Facebook:

“…thankful for living in a location that you can feel all of the seasons…I love the sun and the snow and even the rain!”

I think about this sentiment all the time. How radical it can be to be satisfied, to find joy in whatever it is that’s happening right now. Every one of my ancestors, and yours, made it because they were willing to wait, to be in the now. And now, here we are, gifted with these precious moments.

It’s understandable during these hard times to want to rewind to a rose-colored past or fast forward to a fictionalized future. I find myself trying to scratch these itches so often. I do want to dream and build a new world. I want to bring with me all the things from the past that give me courage and comfort and the creativity needed to craft a future that feels _____. Yet, I want to know, really know: as long as I walk and breathe and love and ache for what I desire, what does it feel like to stay?

I scribbled this tiny invitation to myself earlier in the week: