The Energy of Beginnings

We’re on the other side of the summer sandwich. We’ve eaten the sandwich. The other day I felt leaves crack under my feet and the light at 5pm looked changed. I hardly know where summer went and for whom it left me. Just yesterday I was saying, “How will we ever wear masks in the summer heat? And here we are, having done it and now the question is, “How will restaurants warm their cold patrons when the ground freezes and the snow falls?”  

After 30 Septembers, I never tire of the slow lengthening of days or the shift in the air. The promises of something new, yet old as the time we have created for ourselves—these sturdy goalposts used to measure off the seasons and weeks of our lives. 

I try to remember the days and weeks of the summer. I cannot. And I can, because they are all the same, save but a few. The months have blended together without the help of happenings larger than four people. But there were those days in the Florida Keys and at home soaking in the slowness of my parents’ routines. There were daily walks to the East River. Runs around the reservoir. We made it through epic trilogies and whatever you would call the 9 movies of Star Wars. Polished off a TV series. Lines at the grocery store that have now diminished, but still cause a specific rage. And the hope that any day now, it would end, lines and all. When I cannot remember things, I look at what I wrote. I’m glad I wrote:

The sun was warm. Park Ave was opened to pedestrians and people had come out to feel the sun. No one is in a rush, there’s an easiness to everyone’s momentum and at the same time an uneasiness. Two older men sat four feet apart working on a crossword puzzle together, talking for once about something besides the virus. 

I want to write. But I’m feeling like everything is recycled. Been done. Been thought and overthought. By me and by others. Even this thought I’ve read about this week. This idea of one thing taking up the majority of space in the brain. 

I try to remember April. I can’t remember April. It just slides into May.

We have to sign our lease June 1. It’s May 14. One year down. I feel like I’ve climbed a mountain over the last year, but I’m sliding down and realizing the mountain is upside down, and while I slide I’m also climbing. And there’s no bottom, so no top, no peak. Just slide and just climb.

Patrick watches old baseball games on TV. The announcer gives me nostalgia and so do the colors from the 80s and 90s. I’ve seen these games before, a million years ago, when my brothers watched them live on our old tv.

Upon reading the following sentence, “His house on a hill in Dunedin looks out over a gently rolling green farmscape,” I, too, want a house on a hill. Is this growing up?

I am content with the snippets and resign to look ahead into September and wonder if any other month, even January, will ever contain half the energy of beginnings that this month holds. It seems that just as we begin to loose the sensation of semesters and shake the patterns of school years, we are pulled back to them with our own children off to school or a new job or some other start that reeks of both excitement and trepidation.

I can recall with the twinge of youth so many starts. The roughness of my plaid uniform. Always plaid. For twelve years I wore plaid almost every day. One day I had to change the color of my plaid, red to blue because I started at a new high school. I picked a new sport, as if out of a hat. Like this dwindling summer, I can remember not so much the happenings and the facts, but the feelings. The way you are hopeful. Changed after a summer, ready to show off your new you. 

I can smell the field hockey grass. Maryland grass smells different than Tennessee grass and New York grass. I noticed this last month visiting my parents. Running at an old familiar park, my nostrils were filled with a scent I can only call athletic autumn. It was present when I ran laps with my stick in the air, when I bent over to flick the ball to a teammate, and when I sat, depleted of all energy on the sidelines ready to give my next all. I made my first high school friends on that team. It softened the blow of newness when I faced new classrooms and peers because I had already met these girls on the field. 

Freshman orientation at college seeks to do the same. Give all these strangers a common goal. Bathe the strangeness in excitement. This tactic gave me two of my very best friends. These orientations are abruptly put away after our academic lives. We are left with the subtle changes in the air and the light to usher us into the next new thing.

Summer melts into fall in the city. The light changes, the air cools, early feels late, and afternoons are cozy. Last year I had waited what felt like my whole life for autumn in New York. I was afraid I would miss it. But in reality there are days of transition, not a single defining one, and then you are walking home or you order a warm coffee rather than an iced and you realize it’s here. For a moment the joy and anticipation of being back with your friends after a season apart comes sweeping in. Crisp backpacks and new haircuts and tales of a family vacation. I wonder about this September and this next season and the rest of the year. Who will orient us? What will soften the blow?