This is a little piece I wrote years ago and haven’t been able to do anything with. I was trying to think of ways to express my birth month, and this is what I came up with. I may eventually try to do something for every month of the year, but I haven’t really thought about it much.
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September children are full of the light of the harvest moon and are permeated by the sweet acrid musk of the smoke from burning leaves and the last of the barbecues. A child born in September acknowledges summer, relaxes in winter, but knows the real magic of the year comes with the falling of leaves and planting of pumpkins. They feel the pressure to like the start of school and they do for a week. But the distractions of the colors, the impending crisp air are enough to drive a true September child away from the books to walk down little side streets and paths in the woods to search for the remaining chipmunks and squirrels.
A September child always feels a little cheated that their mothers couldn’t keep them in the womb till October, but feel blessed that they came before the disappointment of November, the end of the real magic time of year. The winter may have its holidays, but it relies on marketing and icons to make it inviting.
A September child’s lips are kissed with cider and their cheeks are made for stuffing away cakey doughnuts and pumpkin pies. Their hair smells like straw no matter what the color and they haunt apple orchards, cemeteries, and destroy piles of leaves left carelessly to be crunched under their delighted feet.
September children are broody, stuck in a transition month with no real holidays. Labor Day and Grandparents Day pale in comparison. But being stuck between summer and autumn have made them determined. They watch for opportunity and adventure in their introverted hideaways in backyards. They feel no apologies for their month ending freedom and only a little jealousy at the months to come. But a smile from a September child means promise of things to come. They get things done. You can see possibility and fall sky in their open, wide eyes. They’re overlooked like so many others, but it helps their dreams and plottings for everyone else to be so distracted.
Their wrath is the lick of trash-burning flames, laughter the incoming of crows, their pleasure that of children playing tag on the way home from the first lazy week of school before the work really starts. September children are often ignored but full of possibility, the inhalation of breath before the year continues on, the thoughts and empty space before meditation. September children know how to live most of all.
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