On Sunday, a woman from Springs I met at a lunch meeting over sandwich wraps from One Stop said she has been going around inadvertently humming the song “Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” popularized by Andy Williams at Christmas 1963:
“It’s the hap-happiest season of all!
With those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings
When friends come to call
It’s the hap-happiest season of all!”
This carol is completely out of season, but she couldn’t help herself. The song just came bursting out of her — feeling, as she was, won-wonderful about the change in the weather and the disappearance of summer’s throngs of very important diners, very impatient shoppers, and very bad drivers.
September to me brings a most distinct change in the inner weather, too. “Bittersweet,” I think, would be the apt word for this moment on the Julian calendar between Labor Day and Columbus Day. It’s a cliché; so sue me.
I do sometimes feel like Winnie the Pooh, myself, cheerfully humming “tiddely-pom” at odd intervals as I go about my daily errands. I leave the house to buy Cherry Garcia ice cream at the I.G.A. and don’t have to wait on line, tiddely-pom. I strip off my Indian cotton caftan and hotfoot it over the stones at Northwest Harbor and dive into the cool water, tiddely-pom, and I’m the only person in sight on the long stretch of beach between the creek and the curve of Cedar Point. Hacking away with a pair of hedge clippers at the overgrown butterfly bush that has collapsed in a high wind on top of my patio barbecue, not a bead of sweat collects on my oft-sweaty brow, tiddely-pom.
But it’s also a bit melancholy, the autumntime, the gloaming of the year. It’s getting late. We must hurry, hurry to eat and drink the last dregs of summer.
If it’s possible to eat too many tomatoes, I have done so in the last three weeks: pails and buckets-ful of Sungolds and heirloom Chocolate Stripes, brown and red. I’ve made tomato jam with caramelized shallots, and Marcella Hazan’s tomato pasta sauce, and my own spin of Marcella Hazan’s tomato pasta sauce (adding garlic and sautéed peppers), and tomato panzanella salad, and far too many tomato sandwiches with Hellmann’s on toast.
The pocket watch is winding down to the still dark of winter. The tick-tick slows incrementally, and you can hear it in the diminished insect chorus (and hear it when there is an unaccustomed break in the traffic and you realize that is the sound of the ocean waves in the distance, not cars).
I’ve been hoarding dahlias and last swims of the summer. (Apparently, I have one or two more last swims in me for 2025.) I pick a bunch of flowers each Saturday at my weekend job at Amber Waves, and return home all covered in mud and hurry to arrange them in one of my excessive number of vases — I’ve optimistically equipped myself for a lifestyle that would demand many vases, and many, many bouquets — but they start to wilt before Saturday comes again. The autumnal cycle of decay seems to have sped up. The house smells of tomato vines and rotted stems of asters and chrysanthemums. We must hurry.
On a warm, balmy September day, I’m Winnie the Pooh rubbing my belly and eating honey with my paws in the golden sunshine, but when it’s overcast or rains the song in my head changes to “It Was a Very Good Year” as performed by Frank Sinatra on the album “September of My Years” (D minor). Bitter and sweet. Sweaters and sandals. Sweet corn and caramel apples. From the brim to the dregs, it poured sweet and clear, it was a very good year.
The man who came from AT&T to perform a service call on the cell tower that is concealed within the steeple of the Presbyterian Church says that cell service in the village should have improved radically this month: The cell service providers have to titrate up to accommodate as many as 300,000 cellphone users in July and August but the number of users at any given moment drops tenfold in autumn.
I am a skeptic and, judging primarily by the persistent traffic pattern on Main Street, I do not think we are truly operating at only one-tenth our summer population. No. In fact, I’m a bit confused that there are still so many people here, walking up and down the sidewalks of Main Street speaking Russian, French, and Portuguese. But at least I can fall asleep with my bedroom windows open and not be startled awake by the strains of a wedding band playing “We Are Family,” wafting on the night air, or shrieks from a pool party accompanied by the banging beat of Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack,” tiddely-pom.