“We haven’t been able to do that because we’ve had a lot going on,” said my husband, accurately, a couple of weeks ago, in response to I don’t remember what.
“Maybe too much going on, actually!” he continued, also accurately.
I’m guessing the first couple of weeks of October has also been very full for a lot of you, too. The question I want to raise here is: How do you know when you go beyond the land of Plenty of Good Stuff To Do and enter the territory of Feeling Too Crowded?
When I stop (putting aside the fact that there’s no time, really, to stop) to think about it, this month has something in common with this piece of furniture:
Overstuffed.
The chair (re-upholstered several years ago) is inviting all right, and comfy too. But there’s that unmistakable “over” quality: there’s nothing dainty or slim about it. This is also true about October.
Before we get back to the issue of “What’s Too Much” (in fact the name of a Smokey Robinson song), I’d like to offer various pieces of evidence for this full-to-the-brim quality of the Orange month:
LENGTH For starters, the 10th month has a full 31 days — sharing that quality with only December, January, March, May, July and August. Admit it: when you look back on your life thus far, these seven months have been more influential than the other five.
REAPING WHAT WE’VE SOWED Those of us with productive vegetable gardens know what kind of abundance we’ve just harvested. If we didn’t have a good freezer before September, we most likely needed one. Good ol’ John Keats got the feeling just right with his great Ode, “To Autumn.” In the first stanza, especially, when he uses the line structure itself to show how the riches can’t be contained: “….to set budding more, / And still more, later flowers for the bees,..” That’s how it was around here with both our tomatoes and green peppers.
INVITE THE PARENTS It’s the month when school and college calendars really get into gear, piling things on. September? Just a preamble. Where I work, we just had Open House (new idea there was a hit: have food trucks in the parking lot!) and now my husband and I are looking forward to flying to Ohio for Parents’ Weekend at Kenyon College. With a third child in his final year, and loving his campus, we don’t want to miss it.
GET-TOGETHERS WITH FRIENDS What is it about used-to-be-Columbus-now-Indigenous-People’s-Day weekend that makes it such a wildly social time? OK, this may be obvious: there’s there’s extra day; plus, everyone’s been in their new routines since Labor Day and they can’t wait to bust out and see whichever friends they didn’t get to see all summer.
Maybe my use of the word “wildly” in that paragraph gave you an exaggerated idea about my own weekend; I won’t go making an exaggerated claims about a Friend Frenzy. But I can say that my husband and I got to visit and hike with three different sets of friends over those three days: a large group of my college friends, a more intimate group of his college friends (no picture available) and then a couple of excellent friends, from years spent in a former town. It all added up to a tremendous gift.
THOSE LEAVES Need I say more? Other people drive hours to come up here to (mostly) gaze out the car windows; we actually live in the midst of it all, and so just a casual walk with the dog treats us to a festival of colors. This splendor doesn’t count as an actual activity in the way, say, getting in the vegetables does; still, we definitely want to allow time to savor what’s out there — and this may require not doing certain other things (say, cleaning or sorting through mail) that tug at us. At least that’s my excuse.
BASEBALL With both American League and National League playoffs happening, who even needs football? (I know, plenty of people, including in my own family, definitely do). And wild stuff erupts on the field — for instance just last night, the Red Sox hit back-to-back grand slam home runs. I mean, you can study history, or you can just watch these games. Plenty of smart people do both.
HOLIDAY HYPE This is my least favorite part of the month, and I bet yours, too. Halloween decorations coming out by mid-September; pumpkin flavors in everything; pressure to plan a perfect Thanksgiving; and the nightly news telling us we should be worried about the arrival of all those Christmas presents we’ve ordered.
Yesterday when I went to get some perennials on sale, I didn’t really mind seeing a witch presiding over all the mums. But getting this magazine in the mail was akin to someone saying, “You don’t have all your plans in order yet for the really really important family time when everything on the table needs to be perfect?” No, thank you. Sure, we should decide at least where we’re going to spend that weekend, but the recipes for “Stellar Sides” can wait at least into November.
So this has us wondering how to manage it all: the bounty; the beauty; the opportunities for reuniting with people we care very much about; the home runs, the steals, the spectacular throws from the outfield.
And I suppose the only answer, for me anyway, is something like a combination of two things my mother used to say, especially when she was perched on her rocking chair near the wood stove, wearing her pumpkin-colored dressing gown as the morning sun poured through the front windows of our ranch house. “You just try to get as much out of it as you can” was Part One. This is something she often heard from her mother, especially about the reading of books. Part Two was “It’s a good idea to find ways to reduce stress.” This was definitely something she (a relaxed person by nature) learned mostly by observing her husband and some of her children as they moved into adulthood. When someone was anxious, she’d notice the “furrowed brow.”
I don’t mean to suggest that she had all the answers, not by a long shot. But when it comes to the matter of October, I’m doing what I can to heed her words. More precisely, I’m recognizing that certain things can wait; that I don’t need to drive to an inessential event an hour away; that I must allow unscheduled time every day because tranquility is important; that trying to be present and cheerful at home for the benefit of my husband and my dog is always a priority.
Since both of my parents died in the month of October (actually on the very same day and in the very same house, although 14 years apart), I can’t help but recall a sense of loss each time it rolls around, too.
Orange you glad we’re here now? I’m wondering how this month feels to you. Overstuffed, just right, or perhaps a time of a certain kind of grieving that you’re not sure others feel? And maybe it can be all this, at once.