The other day I sent a friend an e-mail letting him know I couldn’t go to his birthday party because our grandson was turning one in Michigan. When I told my wife I’d spotted the conflict and dealt with it she pointed out that the birthday party is at the end of September and our grandson was born a year ago this past Sunday. Even if 75 is the new 30, August isn’t the new September.
My first assumption was that wistful passing-of-summer stories are, to be mildly ironic, evergreens, and I wondered if the papers bring them out earlier every year, the need to be first to be wistful being felt just as strongly by crack wordsmiths as the need to be first to be anything else. But when I consulted the Tribune archives for the past two summers, I discovered it isn’t so. Last September Schmich rejoiced in the brief but sublime season of “Septober,” but only one columnist looked the end of summer in the eye. Barbara Brotman wrote on September 1, “The lakefront is still vacation-worthy. The trees are still green and lush. The breezes are still warm. The sidewalk cafes are still serving. Looks like summer to me. So I’m calling it that.” It was September, and Brotman was defiant! This year it was August, and Kass and Schmich and the others were elegiac.
