The Memories and Emotions of September
For me, the nostalgia, memories, and emotions September brings are visceral. When September 1st hits, I feel a shift in myself. I experience an emotional charge. In fact, more than any other month or season, September makes me reminisce about my childhood. It makes me yearn for the specific feelings I experienced during that season of my life. The nostalgia, memories, and emotions September brings don’t happen in any other month.
My love of September starts with it marking the beginning of the –er months because those four months make up the last third of the calendar year. These are my four favorite months and I love them the best.
My Emotional Connections to September
The gut-level sentiment I experience in September through nostalgia, memories, and emotions swirls inside me with remembrances from my early years. The shift from August to September is powerful. Thos myriad childhood memories that surface every year at this time are each tied to the promises of the new month.
For example, growing up, September marked the beginning of school. There was always something so exciting about moving up a year, about deciding what I was going to wear on the first day and just the newness of it all.
September Emotions as an Adult
As I got older, September marked the beginning of the school year for me as a public school teacher. While I still experienced the same emotions and those nostalgic memories arose, I also viewed the transition from summer to fall through a different lens–that of a middle school teacher. I readied myself for the new school year with teacher supply goodies and my own new outfits, just as I’d done as a child. In addition, I got to see my students bustling in with their new outfits and supplies. September always brings this newness with it, and a unique kind of excitement.
Experiencing September as a Mom
Finally, when my kids were school-age, I got to usher them into their new school years each September (or August as the start dates changed). First, we loaded up on school supplies. Second, they each got new outfits. And third, Grammie always got my kids one new pair of shoes every September. She does love her shoes!
In addition to all of that, September is my dad’s birthday month! ❤️
Let the Seasons Begin
In addition to all the nostalgia, memories, and newness of September, the month also ushers in autumn, which is my very favorite season. I grew up in California, lived in Texas as a little girl, and again in my 40s for ten years. Now, however, we’re in North Carolina and we love it here, in great part because of September.
Autumn in North Carolina
In North Carolina, we get seasons. Actual honest-to-god seasons. It’s almost as if a switch is flipped. When the calendar page turns from August to September, the weather starts to cool, and the nights get brisk, which, of course, leads to the leaves changing color.
The Scent of September
There’s also a certain fall scent in the crisp air. The crunch of the leaves sounds underfoot, but at the same time, the vibrant cornucopia of red, orange, and yellow still hangs to the branches.
Finally, September means it’s time to think about pumpkins, not to mention pumpkin spice lattes (yes, I’m one of those people).
Ah, Sweet September, Thank You for the Reminiscing
To sum it all up, September is filled with a ton of good memories for me, which means the transition from August to September gives me an emotional shot of just…something wonderful.
September Quotes
This collection of quotes captures much of what I love about September. Enjoy!
“Autumn is the antidote to stifling summer.” —Terri Guillemets
“All the months are crude experiments, out of which the perfect September is made.” —Virginia Woolf
“I love September, especially when we’re in it.” —Willie Stargell
“September is the month of maturity; the heaped basket and the garnered sheaf. It is the month of climax and completion. September! I never tire of turning it over and over in my mind. It has warmth, depth and color. It glows like old amber.” —Patience Strong
“Wine is the divine juice of September.” —Voltaire
“September has come, it is hers whose vitality leaps in the autumn, whose nature prefers trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.”—Louis MacNeice
“There comes a day each September when you wake up and know the summer is over and fall has arrived. The slant of the sun looks different and something is in the air — a coolness, a hint of frosty mornings to follow.” —Ann Rinaldi
“This windy, bright September afternoon
My heart is wide awake, yet full of dreams.”
—Charles George Douglas Roberts
“September tries its best to have us forget summer.” —Bernard Williams
“As the alluring song of September begins to whisper in my ear, my passionate spirit yearns for the splendor of its promise.” —Peggy Toney Horton
“Come September, children return to school, grownups to work, and the brain to the head.”
—Roger Rosenblatt
“The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September.”
—Helen Bevington
“We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer’s wreckage. We will welcome summer’s ghost.” —Henry Rollins
“Rest your eyes well before September because with all its colours autumn is coming to visit them!”
—Mehmet Murat Ildan
“September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn.”
—Rowland E. Robinson
“Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of autumn. It was a Sunday in September.” —Ali Smith
“September was a thirty-days long goodbye to summer, to the season that left everybody both happy and weary of the warm, humid weather and the exhausting but thrilling adventures.”
—Lea Malot
“The old summer’s-end melancholy nips at my heels. There’s no school to go back to; no detail of my life will change come the onset of September; yet still, I feel the old trepidation.” —Sara Baume
“That old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air… Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.”
—Donna Tartt, The Secret History
“Happily we bask in this warm September sun, which illuminates all creatures.” —Henry David Thoreau
“September is the month of maturity; the heaped basket and the garnered sheaf. It is the month of climax and completion. September! I never tire of turning it over and over in my mind. It has warmth, depth and color. It glows like old amber.” —Patience Strong
“September is dressing herself in showy dahlias and splendid marigolds and starry zinnias.” —Olive Wendell Holmes
“It was a lovely afternoon—such an afternoon as only September can produce when summer has stolen back for one more day of dream and glamour.” —L.M. Montgomery
“Happy September! The world shall now transform into pumpkin everything.” —Keith Wynn
“Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple.” —J.K. Rowling
“How smartly September comes in, like a racing gig, all style, no confusion.” —Eleanor Clark
“By all these lovely tokens, September days are here. With summer’s best of weather and autumn’s best of cheer.” —Helen Hunt Jackson
“But the days grow short when you reach September.” —Maxwell Anderson
“It was September, and there was a crackly feeling to the air.” —Carolyn Parkhurst
“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The windows are open, admitting the September breeze: a month that smells like notepaper and pencil shavings, autumn leaves and car oil. A month that smells like progress, like moving on.” —Lauren Oliver
“Ah, September! You are the doorway to the season that awakens my soul…but I must confess that I love you only because you are a prelude to my beloved October.” —Peggy Toney Horton
“I guess I’m just feeling all September-ish…All the trees change color, the days get very clear—with little smoke on the horizon from burning leaves. Pumpkins begin to come out.” —George Selden
“September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn.” —Rowland E. Robinson