Quotes from the Classics: September
When my oldest baby was an actual baby - no more than 2 or 3 years old - we began a tradition of watching September sunrises. This didn’t happen as it would in the movies. It was not the result of arduous pre-planning or creative brainstorming. It spawned from pure chaos, like the best ideas often are.
When my oldest baby was an actual baby - no more than 2 or 3 years old - we began a tradition of watching September sunrises. This didn’t happen as it would in the movies. It was not the result of arduous pre-planning or creative brainstorming. It spawned from pure chaos, like the best ideas often do.
From the outset, my lovely daughter and I failed to see eye to eye on one important concept. I was madly in Love with sleeping (still am) and she was tolerant, at best (still is). To her, sleep was a necessary part of the human experience, sure, but certainly not something one would purposely go out of their way to do. Sleep was something that just kind of fell upon you when you weren’t paying attention, and in particularly interesting situations, something to be fought against at every turn lest you be caught unawares, fall victim, and MISS something. And when you’re 2 or 3, everything is an interesting situation.
My sweet child decided the best way to retain all the things she’d learned during the day would be to do a systematic review at bedtime…out loud…for hours. If she wasn’t otherwise fighting nap time, she believed dozing for 5 minutes in the car was perfectly sufficient. If she woke up in the morning, going back to sleep wasn’t an option, at least for a few hours. I spent years a haggard shell of a woman and I’m ashamed to admit it, but I was often angry with her. Every once in a while, though, a particularly brilliant mom moment helped me to redeem myself.
Sunrise and tall grass by Rose Erkul
I had such a moment one ridiculously early morning when I woke to find big, blinking, brown eyes staring at me. After having sung songs, rubbed and soothed, brewed tea, coaxed and cajoled, all to no avail, I packed my little one up, drove to the lake, and watched wonder fill her face as color and light filled the clear September sky. Our tradition had begun.
Since then, the places have changed, and we’ve even added another member to our little crew, but the tradition remains, the September sun rising so late in the morning as to not thwart the sleep my eldest does get these days. Our latest location is at the top of a very high hill that requires us to trek across a field and up 116 steps. When we first found it, my youngest (who Loves to sleep, thank heaven) was about the same age as her sister. Each year about halfway across the field, she would inevitably yell, “Mommy, I can’t make it.” I’d have to pick her up and race across dewy grass and up a concrete corridor to the beat the sun! We always made it, though my chest felt like it was going to cave in each time. I watched a new little face fill with the same amazement my oldest and I had come to know, and the three of us would face the coming of a new day together.
Recently my littlest has managed to make the journey without help, and there is a pang of sadness. I know they’re growing up and I will have to let them go, as the trees let their leaves go each Fall. I also know nothing real is ever really gone. I know that while seasons change and years pass, relationships woven with September sunrises and lots of Love, will remain.
Check out these quotes that capture the specialness of September:
“All the months are crude experiments, out of which the perfect September is made.”
“Happily we bask in this warm September sun, which illuminates all creatures…”
“Comfort me with apples. ”
“I’ll tell you how the Sun rose -
A Ribbon at a time -
The Steeples swam in Amethyst -
The news, like Squirrels, ran - ”
“There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!”
“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love — that makes life and nature harmonize. ”
“The first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it is too late.”
Love in all things,
April Eileen