September

[Note:  this is a subject I submitted.]

September's probably my favorite month.  The weather's no longer as hot as the summer peak, and it isn't yet cold.  That's also the time when school starts, and for a long time I thought of it as the true beginning of the year.  And I guess I hoped that the new school year would be less aggravating than the last one, though it usually wasn't.

September is also a time when the leaves start dying on the maple trees, changing color and falling off. (The oak leaves take longer.) After we started a garden, there'd be vegetables to harvest then.  I remember the smell when Mother cooked our tomatoes with vinegar and spices to make chow chow preserves.  And there would also be the first frosts, with the lawn turning grey in the morning.

I guess I think of September as a time to get serious and start your long-term plans.  For me, it's a time of beginnings.  There was this Japanese movie called After Life where people who have just died spend a week deciding on a single memory of their life to take into eternity.  I think my memory would be coming home from school in Sackville for lunch along York Street, lined with tall trees, in September.