Out of t he Blue By Debora h Sa lomon

Falling for October

An d put t ing th e summer behin d us

By deBor A h sA l oMon At last . . . October!

The word, hardly mellifluous. The image, glorious, when oaks and maples flame yellow, orange and red before browning and blowing away. The chill of an October morning washes away the humid, fetid air of summer like a wave upon the Maine seacoast.

I fell in love with October at age 5, maybe 6, when my parents took the train from Manhattan, where we lived, to a dude farm in southern Vermont. Here, post-har vest, the Jones family rented out one-room log cabins to cit y folk hungr y to pet a pig, pick a pumpkin, milk a cow, feed a chicken, skip a stone across the pond and eat at a long communal table in the farmhouse.

Heaven, especia lly break fast, ser ved far mer- early: pancakes drenched in loca l maple sy r up, maybe f r ied apples f rom trees bordering the meadow.

My parents weren’t big on vacations. T his is the only one I remember, ever.

The cabins had neither electricit y nor running water. Ever y morning a metal bucket appeared on the tiny front porch, with a skim of ice around the edges.

Good thing we brought flannel pajamas.

How humans are wired into cycles of the sun and the seasons never fails to amaze. A ll I know is the images and flavors of this weekend lef t an imprint, which may explain why, for a lifetime, I have risen before dawn and gloried in October.

For me, the rapture of April and May signal only hay fever . . . and dreaded summer. September . . . unpredictable.

This summer wasn’t too bad, weather-wise, until August’s last gasp of 90 -plus degree days. But it was a disturbing summer, almost too disturbing for October to erase. The COV ID’s welcome slide became a surge, especially among children. Images of families — hot, hungr y, unwashed, desperate — waiting for evacuation from Afghanistan led ever y newscast. I can’t erase from my memor y the infirm grandma being pushed down a dust y road in a wheelbarrow. L eaders proved that common sense is not necessarily taught at Har vard and Yale. Katrina’s cousin Ida struck New Orleans with a vengeance. Providing near-comic relief, the royal family bickered and whined while Ben Af fleck, to the paparazzi ’s delight, rediscovered J-L o.

Is that Shakespeare rewriting himself, “This was the summer of our discontent . . . ” from his grave?

Octobers of yore meant watching my son score touchdowns, a pot of homemade veggie-beef soup in the fridge, McIntosh apples and corduroy. As a child I wore corduroy overalls, jackets and hats, as did my children. Their nav y blue became faded and sof t from many washings.

W hatever happened to corduroy?

A ny day now the air w ill feel scr ubbed clean in the low af ter noon sun. Temps and humidit y dow n, bugs (except yellow jackets) a lmost gone. AC of f, w indows open. Tr ue, fa ll foliage is not a Sandhills’ for te. For that, plan a brewer y- crawl in A shev ille. But October still impar ts not only beaut y but relief . . . summer is over, w inters here are nothing to dread.

October is the dividing line. I’m oh-so-ready to hop across.

Welcome, October. And thanks. PS Deborah Sal om on is a w r it er for PineSt r aw an d T he Pi lot . Sh e m ay be re a ch e d at d ebsal om on@n c.r r.com.