When I was seventeen I was lucky enough to play the lead (and only) female role in a production of The Fantasticks, at Western Reserve Academy, an all boys prep school in Hudson, Ohio.
Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones wrote those beautiful songs and my young voice was suited to most of them. One of my favorite songs from that play is called "Try to Remember", and this time of year I find it running through my head most of the time.
I walk through the garden on these cool (almost) fall mornings and sing,
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
The grass is so green, the tomatoes are bursting, egg plants seem to spring from nowhere
and I start thinking how nice it would be to live back In California, where I wouldn't have to worry about an early frost. With luck, I'll be cooking fresh, home grown veggies for another month.
Once October comes along, with its bursts of yellow and orange and red, I am in love with Nebraska. Recent conversations with other Nebraskans confirm that the best times to live here are May/June and September/October. The rest of the time it's either too hot or too cold. But that's another blog completely. This time of year, around the autumnal equinox, before the burst of color arrives, I grieve for summer.
The song ends with,
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
The fire of September, that made us mellow
Tomorrow, when fall begins, I'll still long for June. But October is just around the corner.
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