Ebb and Flow

Published 12:00 am Sunday, September 19, 1999

DEBORAH CORRAO / L’Observateur / September 19, 1999

I love September.

I was born in September so there will always be something magical about the month to me. But there’s more to it than that.It’s the month that you can begin to feel the change in the air – when the summer doldrums are swept away like dead leaves, surrendering to the first stirrings of autumn.

September has an edge to it. You can sense the excitement in the air ashurricane masses build up in the tropics to clash with cooler air masses coming down from the north. An electricity.There are no flashy foliage shows like in the northern part of our country, but we can feel it just the same – a little less humidity, a little nip in the air.

The energy in the air seems to energize us. We begin to get our houses inorder. We open windows for that final cleaning before the onset of winter. We dust and polish. We go through our closets.More even than the New Year, September is a time associated with new beginnings. We go back to school. A fresh start in a new grade or a newschool, different teachers and subjects. We have brand new notebooks andpencils, new clothes.

Clubs, teams and other organizations re-group after the summer hiatus.

Activities begin again with a renewed vigor.

On another level, September is the ninth month of year, traditionally the month of harvest, the completion of a cycle, of coming to fruition. Daysget shorter, nights longer.

But September is bittersweet. For me, personally, it reminds me that I ama year older. It brings up regrets and sorrows, much like the advent of theNew Year.

The change in the air and the beginning of school remind us that the glorious days of summer are over. It’s time to put the laziness of vacationbehind and buckle down once again. We symbolically harvest the days ofour lives, examining our successes as well as our failures, and putting them in perspective, much like the farmer stores the grain for the winter ahead.

What we must remember, in September and throughout the year, is that we can pick up our lives, build on what’s good and learn from our failures.

Nothing is ever over. We can look at September as an affirmation that lifegoes on in spite of us – that everything has its time and place – that all’s right with the world.

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