September is a strange month. The end of summer and the rapidly shortening days emphasise the sense of time speeding on. In recent years it was a month for off-season holidays and adventures, but with our children now in school, it's regained the traditional, slightly melancholy and reflective feeling that long hid its beauty from me.
To start with September was always the beginning of a new academic year. The sadness of freedom and adventure ending, having to return to the repeating days of schedules set by others. Even if you didn't go away on holiday, stayed home to work a summer job, or an internship, you didn't have homework or coursework. It was different to the usual school routine, and hinted at another life.
I don't really remember a time before this pattern was true, and it lasted eighteen years; through primary school, secondary school, sixth form and university. Even my first none casual job started in September; probably because the company didn't want to spook the freshly graduated with a change in their now deeply rooted annual cycles.
Since then September has had a bit of a rehabilitation. With the severing of the link to the academic year, I could enjoy September on its own terms. Often still warm and sunny; enough for days out and lazy afternoons in the sun, but with the darkness coming in time to wrap you up for bed.
It also became my main month for the year's 'big' holiday, if there was one. With families back at school, prices were instantly cheaper, places less crowded, but the weather still reliably good.
Over the years I managed to travel to new and far-off places, that with a regular job I, could now afford to visit. Canada, California, Portugal, Morocco, Japan, South Korea, Fiji and Australia. All done in the early Autumn (technically Spring for Australia), in a month that I'd previously considered dispiriting, which had now revealed itself to be so much more.
Last year that changed back again, and as our eldest started school. Now we're again locked into the academic rhythm, and probably will be until our youngest finishes secondary education, which could easily be another fifteen years.
Summer holidays aren't the same as a parent. They're not really more relaxed, as you're often trying to work and look after children who might be at home. One improvement is you don't have quite the same hectic morning rush and stress that makes you feel like you've run a marathon before even started at work. The office is also noticeably quieter, as so many other people are away.
You also get to see your children enjoying themselves, playing freely outside in the mostly (often, sometimes?) good weather, and finding any excuse for an ice-cream. As this is now when we can, this is also when we do our longer trip; usually to visit relatives and the surrounding area, for a couple of weeks.
If you try to ignore the travel stress, this is usually more relaxed, there's no deadlines to meet, less to do, and interesting people and places to visit. For our children, at the moment, a beach or new playground counts as an exciting place; visiting historic locations or exploring cities, the kind of thing I like to do, is only results in a "booooring".
When that ends, and school and nursery start again, the warm freedom ends. For us adults the change isn't so big, as for the children, but there's still a return to a return to the rushing to meet hard daily deadlines.
Now September has turned into something a little different. It doesn't have the same big holiday comedown as it used to; the sympathetic return to the every day for the children, and the quickly changing days have turned it into something more reflective.
It feels a bit like the the limbo between Christmas and New Year, where one year is almost done, but the new one hasn't started yet. You feel between years - anything you do there doesn't really belong to the old year - but isn't part of the new one. All that's left is to look back, and perhaps think about the future if you dare.
So now September sits between the seasons, it's not part of the summer, the long hot days and adventures are gone, but it's not really part of the Autumn, there's no need to hide inside quite yet, and there are still good days to be had.