September Song

September, 1990.  I turn sixteen.  Monty, my best friend, takes me to a CSU volleyball game.  At the game, an acapella group sings the national anthem, and one poor soul sings loudly on a rest.  Monty and I look at each other and try not to laugh, but it strikes us as so funny that we can’t stop laughing.  When the game ends, neither of us knows who won because we laughed and talked the whole time.  As we make our way down the bleachers, I look at Monty and know that I want to spend many more September nights just like this one.

September, 1991.  I celebrate my seventeenth birthday at my house, then at Monty’s house.  Monty’s mom, Janet, and I share the same birthday, so Monty and his dad buy us a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake with both of our names on it.  When they sing “happy birthday” to Janet and me, she puts her arm around me and pulls me close.  As we blow the candles out together, my wish is for years and years of birthdays shared with Janet.

September, 1995.  Monty and I have two semesters of college left—he’s attending the Colorado School of Mines, and I’m going to CSU.  He drives home on the weekends, and we take long walks in the September evenings, holding hands and planning our future together.  The night air smells like chimney smoke and damp leaves.  We wish on stars, and I feel a presence between us.  God is here.

September, 1997.  Monty and I have been married for a little over a year.  He has a temporary job at HP that we pray will become permanent.  I’m supposed to be writing, but I can’t produce a single word and feel myself slipping into depression.  I read voraciously to escape my reality.  I stumble upon a fiction book that quotes a poet named Louis MacNeice.  Intrigued by those few quotes, I make my first purchase from Amazon—a used copy of MacNeice’s collected poems.  Within that collection is his novella-length poem called “Autumn Journal.”  It transports me to London in the autumn of 1938.  I’ve never read words put together like this—history, written in line after breathtaking line.  I’m inspired.  Elevated.  Filled with words and possibilities.  MacNeice is not religious, but there’s a spiritual element to his writing.  For a season, the depression and loneliness lifts.  And I think, God is here, in these words.

September 11^th, 2001.  Monty and I are watching “The Today Show” when a plane strikes the World Trade Center’s North Tower.  Seventeen minutes later, a plane crashes into the World Trade Center’s South Tower.   The September sky above the towers fills with smoke as flames pour out the windows of the towers.  Monty and I watch, frozen in horror, as the South Tower collapses, followed by the North Tower just 29 minutes later.  We hear that two passenger planes are unaccounted for; the news anchors begin to speculate about terrorism.  I hold Monty’s hand and my heart breaks as we see people jumping from the windows of the towers.  We are watching people dying.  I keep thinking that this can’t be happening—not here.  Not in America.

Late September, 2001.  I’m glued to the news coverage of the tragedy, thinking that somehow this will all make sense when I know more.  I hear about flight numbers.  Possible numbers of casualties.  Timelines.   And the terrorist plot behind it all.  Yet the more I know, the less it makes sense.  I see the absolute worst of humanity—photos of the men who crashed the planes.  Footage of people in the Middle East celebrating our tragedy.  Hate crimes against Muslims who are every bit as American as I am.  I vacillate between anger and sadness, wondering where God is in all of this.  And then the stories of the best of humanity start to emerge—stories of passengers who sacrificed their own lives to save others.  First responders who ran towards death, not because it was their job but because it was their higher calling.  I watch countries around the world hold prayer vigils as they grieve with us.  I see tattered American flags flying over the shape of a cross found in the wreckage:  our collective hearts are broken, but God is still here.

September, 2007.  I’m lost in a downward spiral of addiction.  I can’t concentrate on the words in books, so I look at books of artwork instead.  I discover the pastel art of Wolf Kahn, and for a few brief moments, beauty breaks through my brokenness.  As I look at his depictions of autumn, I remember other Septembers when life seemed so abundantly possible.  I feel tears on my cheeks and realize there is life in me still—a scintilla of hope stirs.  I am so broken, but God is still here.

September 19, 2013.  It’s my first birthday in our new hometown.  My parents have Monty and me and my brother over for a birthday dinner.  When I blow out the candles on my cake, I feel a twinge of sorrow, remembering Janet, gone for 7 years now.  I look at Monty and know he feels it, too—so much more than I.  Yet I’m also filled with gratitude for the chance for a sober new beginning with these people I love so much.  Looking at them, I know: God is here.

September, 2015.  Monty and I are driving home from my recovery meeting, a nighttime drive we’ve been making twice a week for two years now.  I notice the occasional light out in the dark fields.  And for the first time, I realize I’m seeing farmers harvesting millet and drilling wheat.  Having grown up in the city, this is almost miraculous for me—it’s my very own scene from “Little House on the Prairie.”  And it creates in me a sense of pride and admiration for the hardworking farmers all around us.

September 21^st, 2018.  My mom and dad and Monty and I go out to dinner to celebrate my birthday.  It’s a 45-minute drive to the restaurant, so music is a must.  Monty drives, and I’m the DJ, taking requests for songs.  Mom requests “September Morn” by Neil Diamond.  I find it on my phone, and as it begins to play, I realize I’ve never heard it.  I’m surprised to find myself crying as I listen to it—somehow Neil Diamond captured the very essence of September in this one song.  Listening to it with three of the people I love most in the world makes for a moment so beautiful it hurts.  Every fiber of my being cries out—Thank God I’m still here.

September 24^th, 2018.  It’s almost midnight.  Monty and I hear owls calling to each other, so we go out on our front porch to see if we can find where they are.  There’s a harvest moon, shining so brightly that it looks almost like dawn.  Monty and I lean on each other, shivering a bit, and look up into our neighbor’s maple tree just as an owl flies away from the top of the tree.  Monty and I stand in silence, marveling at the sight of that majestic owl flying so close to us.  We’re still not used to rural life; I hope we never are.  I always want my soul to be moved by the September song of owls and the sight of a harvest moon.  In the middle of all that is beautiful and broken, I will know: God is here.