From ecarton@clark.netWed Sep 13 15:53:01 1995
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 1995 17:24:55 -0400
From: Emily Carton 
To: adult-sibs@falcon.ic.net
Subject: September


September should be my favorite month.  Here in Washington, the heavy air
begins to shift, and the air that moves in is like the sweetest embrace.
The leaves are already beginning to fall - a few at a time, and the yellow
finches stay close to the feeders before many of them make their way further
south.  The school bus came and picked up the children - off they rode with
their backpacks to a school that I wished I had gone to as a child - where
part of the goal is to create an environment where they can feel the
happiness and freedom of learning and movement through a campus on an old
farm - a freedom of space and movement and safety that happens as a
priviledge of childhood - and for children who have the priviledge...  The
windows are open, the lightweight quilt is on the bed, and the flowers, in
their last effort of the year put on a magestic show beneath the elm tree.
The street is quiet during the day, and all the dogs feel like puppies,
reenergized after this long heat wave.  But for a writer the present and
past always mingle; memory is everywhere.  I put things on hold, for those
stories, for the journal notes: my own September's past when I cried each
morning and vomited before leaving for a school where the teachers were
blind in that the students were a "body" and not individuals fighting their
own little demons.  September  was the month that my sister died, when I
cried in the lunch line, knowing that hundreds of eyes were watching me and
wondering why I was crying. But I knew what they didn't: that even though no
one had told me I knew that when my sister left for the hospital a few days
earlier that I would never see her again.  The memories come, but I look out
my window and say, " I am glad to be here."  And no matter what I really
believe or don't believe - I know that this life is a gift and part of this
life is my sorrow that has eased with time, but remains forever.

posted 13 Sept. 1995

copyright Emily Carton, 1995
For permission to reprint contact the author
ecarton@clark.net 
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