Thank God it's finally September again
Or why I'm overjoyed that I am living somewhere with hardcore seasons again!
It rained all day yesterday in Berlin. Hard. I noticed a few trees leaning more toward orange than green and I took a deep breath. It feels like good to be at the mercy of conspicuous seasons again. As I rode the train to the library, and the push and pull of the car lulled me into a meditative state, I noticed it felt extraordinarily good to be in motion, in transition. It’s been a rough two years of road blocks, stagnancy, loss. I finally feel like myself again. Perhaps because I’ve been spending a lot of time in shabby public buildings. Along with the bureaucracy in Germany comes a plethora of dusty spaces, where people gather to use old desktop computers, rifle through yellowing files, and stamp fresh ink on official documents.
It’s my personal paradise.
For some reason, the calmness that came over me as I watch seasons change and brick buildings fly past the windows, made me overwhelmingly homesick. This wash of nostalgia takes over every Fall, but it was much easier to ignore in Southern California where one of the only signifiers of the season was the annual stocking of Pumpkin-O’s at the Westwood Trader Joe’s. Every September, I start to remember the kitchen I grew up in and to miss it with a dull ache.
I often went straight there after school to find a snack, sit at the large granite table overlooking the old trees in the yard, and enthusiastically begin my first assignments of the year. I remember sitting there and memorizing the bones in my body. Writing an essay on Susan B. Anthony with the help of my mom. Gluing tin foil colored over with blue marker to a shoe box for my deciduous forest diorama – my mom was innovative and it was surely the most realistic frozen pond representation that Mountain View Elementary has ever seen. Usually while I worked, my mom stood at the stove a few feet way cooking or just down the back stairs in the laundry room. And I think her presence comforted me almost as much as the unmoving table. The unmoving schedule of school. The familiar scents of pencil shavings and eraser rubbings and apples.
I looked forward to the smell of apples cooking all year. Long before October came, I began begging my mom for her apple cider and apple sauce. Requesting potato soup and other winter dishes. The smell of cinnamon warming in juice or root vegetables stewing in broth made me feel a sort of calm that I can hardly explain. It quieted my nerves, situated me securely at the table, and in the ebbs and flows of the academic calendar.
It was always such a relief. Lounging in the hot sun of an Idaho summer never came naturally and it seemed to me like I always arrived at the first day of school paler than when I’d left it in June. I loved the routine and regularity of school. My day neatly unfolding in just the same way from 8:40-3:15, followed by reruns of Seinfeld on the beat up TV in the kitchen, soft pretzels warm on my tongue as an after school snack. I felt so comfortable nestled between the little to-do’s in my planner.
These last two weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching. When am I not? And trying to figure out a 5-year plan, or at least something that would lend me a modicum of stability. The Pandemic really messed up my plans, but it may truly have been for the best. I planned to graduate into a secure job, then the hiring freezes were put in place, and I started pulling unemployment when I lost my barista gig at Starbucks due to an emergency order in LA. It has been an entire 2 years, and I still sometimes feel like my word is about to disappear again.
Even if a pandemic hadn’t hit me hard right as I graduated, I think being in my 20’s was specifically designed by Satan himself to make me miserable. If God were just, I would’ve skipped straight from the celebrations of turning 21 to the begrudging acceptance of my 30’s. At 24, I have no bedtime, no certainty over what happens to me between 8:40 and 3:15, no one is asking for my thoughts on feminist activists, and there are no apples cooking slowly when I walk in the door at the end of a day out trying to piece together a life. It’s terrifying, but somehow the further I move away from “freedom” in my day-to-day, the closer I move to freedom in myself.
I’m a creature of habit, which is potentially why I am so into meals, and schools are institutions that are built on routine, for better or for worse. This week I’m searching for stability, from which I can explore myself and the world around me. I’m searching for a trajectory, at the end of which, I may find myself comforted by the shabby institutions to which I owe so much happiness. I’m finally starting to realize that an environment doesn’t need to be physically or logistically challenging in order for me to grow there. It may even be true that if I feel safe somewhere, that’s where I can really be myself.
Here is to the familiar rains of Autumn, the scent of apples on the stovetop, and to being myself no matter how generic the day-to-day may seem. With this newfound movement, born of a rigid schedule, I am moving straight to the market to pick up apples and stew them for a few hours. I’ll probably call my mom while I do it.