Our first apartment was this great little space, loaded with character and charm. Though we have lived in many different homes over the past twenty seven years, that first place may have been the greatest, at least where uniqueness was considered…
We had moved in, in May.
The carved wood french style front doors sat a top a flight of metal steps, (the apartment was directly above a chiropractic office,) in the small downtown of a city. The history of the building was that a beloved Ob-Gyn and his wife had created the apartment on the second floor of this beautiful, old house, to be their residence. The main floor he had converted into his offices, and the once-carriage-house building in the back was renovated into their birthing center. By the time we came on the scene, however, many years had passed and each unit was rented out individually. Even so, it was a regular occurrence to encounter someone saying “oh, you live in old doc’s place! I had my kids there!”
None of that is remotely relevant to this post, but sometimes a fun rabbit trail of backstory is in order. Today, on this very average first-day-of-autumn, steaming cup of tea in hand, this moment seemed the perfect match for such a thing.
I was working the graveyard shift in those days, at a local food production plant, while my husband worked days at a glass factory. We were young, pretty naive and absolutely broke, but life felt rich despite what our bank account showed.
I had an elderly hispanic lady who lived a few houses down from our apartment, that worked with me. Fun little side note: When I first met her, I hated her. In all fairness, I didn’t like her because she was so mean to me. She didn’t have great english, and when she had been assigned to train me for my very physically demanding (no joke. I’ve never worked so hard, in my life) job, she was awful to me. I was 19 at the time, and honestly just wanted to do my job, and live my life, and also for everyone to love me and find me capable…
It had been a few days after we moved in, as we took a walk one evening, that I saw her sitting on her porch. She glared at me, probably thinking she was cursed that I was her new neighbor. This continued a few times, and then one night at work she gave me a small bag of vegetables from her garden. After some time passed, she approached me and asked if she could ride to and from work with me. She didn’t know how to drive, and it would make it a lot easier if her husband didn’t have to stay up late to take her to work, get up early to pick her up and work a demanding job in the middle. Though I still wasn’t her biggest fan, I was more than willing to help her out. By the time September approached, our long drive out to the Plant was one of the highlights of my day. I loved her, and have missed her since our days together. I can’t imagine how absolutely hard her life was. THAT JOB was hard, and I was young. I also can’t imagine how scary it would be to train younger, more able bodied people, when you desperately needed the job. I wish I had realized these things then, but how could I? I was a baby…
Anyway, it was one September morning after work, as my steel-toed boots clanged up those metal stairs, that the Scent of September met my nose. How I had lived nearly two decades and never experienced anything like it, I’m not sure. Suddenly, bone-tired and weary, I stood traveling through Septembers past. Apple picking in Gem County orchards… laughing with friends… camping in the mountains and bundling up tighter because the weather was cooling quick… angels in leaf piles… horse back rides through a sea of color changing trees… countless mugs of steaming ciders, cocoas and tees… hay rides with boys I liked… bon fires, sleep overs, first dates… walks home from school… bailing hay…
the flood just kept coming.
I suddenly smelled fresh apple crisp, and then the taste of fresh bread with my grandmother’s apple butter. My nose recalled the way that one boy smelled sweet, like honey, and musky like the color of amber, remembering my heart’s pitter patter at the way his smile stirred my soul.
There, on that step, one random September morning, I relived a million similarly ordinary September moments as if they had just happened.
No other calendar day has prompted such a magical montage moment like that, but somehow every year there will be an autumn day to tickle my nostalgic senses. I call it the Scent of September, because I don’t know what else to call it really. Creative, I know…
It always surprises me, catching me off guard.
It also reminds me that this life is beautiful, and magical, and that these moments, though fleeting, live on…
