The End of Summer, September 2006

The clocks, signalling wintertime, don’t go back until October, but for many of us it is during September that we start to feel the changing of the season.

The long summer holidays are coming to an end, the Arts Festival is over, the Galway Races have come and gone, and all across the country kids are getting ready to go back to school. The shops have started selling their winter stock, the greys and browns and blacks taking over from the brightly coloured summer clothes. Even the weather has conspired to remind us that the summer season is almost over, giving us some relatively cold and rainy days these past few weeks.

This time of the year is in many ways a time of change, really. A change of pace for most people, but for many of us also change of more significant kinds. School leavers, for example, have just gotten their anxiously awaited Leaving Cert results. They are now faced with what will most likely be one of the most significant changes in their lives. The comfortable, if not always fun, routine of being a kid, school days, living at home, and being looked after by your parents will now come to some sort of end. The school-leaver is now becoming a young adult. They might still live at home, but they’ll start thinking about moving out. They might still be studying, but they are also beginning to earn some money. For those beginning their first full-time jobs the change is even greater! Gone are the three month holidays, the half days, the occasional lazy day, the getting home at half four.

They now have to get used to a completely different routine: working 9-6, four weeks holidays max throughout the year, no sick days without serious consideration. Those continuing their education still get the long holidays, but their pace of life changes a lot too. In college no-one is going to send a note home to your parents if you don’t hand in your assignments, or don’t turn up for lectures, the onus is on the student. Moving to another city, into student accommodation, or digs or a shared house, becoming fully aware, perhaps for the first time, how much rent, bills, food, etc actually cost is a big change too. Really‘ fun and exiting, of course it is, but it can be tough too, and as anyone who has ever had a tough time in any situation can tell you, the tough times are much harder to share than the good times. Of course it remains an verwhelmingly positive and exiting change for most.

School leavers aren’t the only ones being faced with change at this time of the year. People begin to think more inside and less outside, as it were. Adult evening and part-time courses, for fun or further learning, are part of the autumn and winter seasons, and many a one is getting ready to start. The evenings are getting noticeably shorter now, the turf is beginning to be laid in, and the oil-tanks filled. Once the hustle and bustle of the next few weeks comes to an end and everyone is settled once again into their autumn/winter routine, what we will notice, apart from the worsening weather, the shorter days the warmer clothes, is that the pace of our lives seems to slow down a bit, and become a little more introspective.

We know that during the coming season nasty weather and warm open fires will keep us in more, and we might get to spend more time together, but we also tend to start thinking a little bit more. About stuff, or about  nothing in particular maybe, but also about ourselves, the year passing and how it has been so far; about how we will spend the last few weeks of the year, and eventually about the year to come. We’ll start to reflect on everything we have achieved this year, and everything we still want to, about the things we have kept on the long finger and might want to tackle, and sometimes we get sad. Sad that the summer is gone, and yet another year is nearly over. Sad when we have to face yet another wet and miserable day, sad that we hardly get to see the daylight, it gets dark so early. Sad at the lack of the sun. Yet surely it helps to remember that even if the season affects you in this way, still it is just a season. It passes, everyday until the summer season comes along once again, and we can look forward to long days, lazy days, holidays, to t-shirts and barbeques and sun.

In the meantime I, for one, am looking forward to not having the children around me all day, every day. I am looking forward, really, to preparing school lunches and early mornings, because during school hours the kids will be busy and I will have a little space to breathe, to work without worrying about who will look after them. I am looking forward very much to having a good excuse for sending them to bed at a reasonable hour and having a couple of hours ‘grown up time’ in the evenings. And I am looking forward to warm cosy woollies, lazy Sundays in front of a roaring fire, to autumn colours and the occasional glorious day that autumn brings, to fallen leaves and chestnuts and pumpkins. I am even beginning to look forward to the idea of snow this year. Although that might be pushing it a little!

This article was first published in Athenry News and Views, Sept. 2006