“One day you turn around and it’s summer. Next day you turn around and it’s fall. And the springs and the winters of a lifetime, what ever happened to them all?”
So begins the wistful, beautiful ballad “The September of My Years” (lyrics by Sammy Cahn, music by Jimmy Van Heusen, sung by Frank Sinatra ).
And now here we are, in early November, smack dab in the middle of fall, the time of year that such songs — and popular culture as a whole — liken metaphorically to life’s slow winding down.
“The golden warm September of my years,” crooned Sinatra in the soaring finale of the 1965 song.
Now, understand, he was talking about turning 50, for godsakes! That seems a little panicky to me. Sinatra himself had more than three decades of life remaining, after all.
But here’s how he felt, as spoken in his introduction to the song, which led off the album of the same name:
“Ah yes, 50. September. Father time with a frost warning. My leaves are turning. How green they were, and how bright they are. And how wonderful my love affair with life.”
Sounds like a guy facing imminent death, not simply midlife. Maybe he should have waited for the November of his years to turn on the melancholy.
(Side Note: Sinatra’s take on being an old guy at age 50 sounded quite accurate to me when I listened to that song in my pre-teen years. Side Note #2: Yes, I was geeky enough to listen to a lot of Sinatra along with rock n roll as a youth. In fact, when I re-visited “The September of My Years” for this post, I remembered every word enough to sing along.)
What got me thinking about this whole autumn/end-of-life thing were the latest of the annual laments by several former residents of the Northeast.
“I really miss the fall,” say these people, many now living in such almost-perfect-climate areas as Southern California. They remember the brilliant tree colors and the end of hot summer days, bringing the welcome change of clothing to ward off chilly days. There’s hot apple cider. There’s Friday night football, bundled up in the grandstands.
When I received one of these sentiments in an email last month, I had to lay down my bottom-line: Fall means winter is coming. It means get ready: Wrap up those outdoor projects, make those final lawn preparations, get out the snow shovels and roof rake, put the air conditioners back in storage, arrange the furnace tune-up, store the dehumidifier, crank up the humidifiers, put out extra dCon for the rodents now seeking out the warmth of your home from the season’s first outdoor chills, air out the winter clothing, check out the ice-melting salt supply, and take the car in for a final check of tire treads and the necessities for safe travel in snow, ice and freezing temperatures.
Accompanying all of this are the mental preparations. Soon, life will be full of regular snow shoveling, gray days for weeks on end, slippery roads and additional challenges to just getting through the day. You better have your mind and body ready.
Of course, for many, getting into the September of their years in the Northeast generally means getting out of town for the Novembers, Decembers, Januarys, Februarys and Marches of their calendars, if one can afford it.
Thousands of these senior “snowbirds” flee to warmer climes, primarily Florida. They may stay a few weeks or months or the entire winter. That way they must be able to truly enjoy the wondrous early fall days, knowing the coming winter days are for others to dread. Warm weather is in their future
Meanwhile, just how do the seasons compare to the stages of life in areas where the weather remains pretty constant? There is no great turning of leaves, as Sinatra felt happening to himself upon turning 50. No frost warning.
Yes, there is some change in foliage and lowering of temperatures, even in the warmer areas, but nothing close to what we experience in the Northeast.
What we do have in common in the United States, at least, is the shortening of days, as noted in another Sinatra classic from the same 1965 album, “September Song”:
“Oh it’s a long long while from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September.”
But even this tune — composed by Kurt Weill, with lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, introduced by Walter Huston in the 1938 Broadway musical “Knickerbocker Holiday” — quickly gets back to whole leaf thing:
“When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame, one hasn’t got time for the waiting game.”
Really, then, you can’t really tie the process of aging to the passing of seasons in warm-winter locales. The Octobers and Novembers of Southern California are really like the Aprils and Marches — pretty nice every day, certainly not presenting nature’s bleak and near-death surroundings like those of cold climates.
But even in four-season territory it’s a little heavy-handed to say September is time to fear the end is near. Around here, even before our current global warm-up, there still are plenty of warm days. The weather really is more reminiscent of summer than foreboding the arrival of fall.
And with the time change — putting the clocks back an hour — now shifted to early November, even the universal gloom of shortened days doesn’t hit until a bit later than the old days.
Still, those actual climate conditions in September, October, November and December around here do actually correspond to how the geezer years generally unfold.
September really is like 50 — not the “Grim Reaper is knocking,” golden warm 50s of Sinatra’s “The September of My Years” but the more realistic “gotta slow down and face how my life has shaped up” 50s that most experience.
There’s still plenty of bounce left in those 50-year-old steps, still “a lotta livin’ to do,” as fictional rocker Conrad Birdie might say. Most of us are still a several years away from finding out the grim toll our early years have taken on our bodies and minds — the aches and pains that come with the deterioration of our joints, teeth, senses and brain cells.
However, we do begin realizing in our 50s that “what you see is what you get” (to quote yet another song). The career path, marital situation, child-rearing choices and other life-shaping decisions are pretty set, or at least in need of immediate attention if change is desired. Hence, we get the “mid-life crises” years, when people either rebel against much of what happened in the first five decades of life or come to accept their fate, some happily some glumly.
Then comes the October chill (now we are talking "frost warning"), the November darkness, the December freeze and grayness. So, October can be 60 — time to shore up those “winter” preparations like living wills, retirement funds, home down-sizing, etc. — and November is 70, which is closer to Sinatra’s gloomy take on 50 (without the leaf-changing analogy), while December is like being 80, a time to hunker down and tough out the now-daunting challenges of every-day life.
“Oh the days dwindle down to a precious few, September . . . November,” goes the final stanza of ‘September Song.”
Beyond that, well, there is the deep freeze of January and the depressing winter linger of February and March. So, so you could choose to continue that whole lifetime comparison thing — being 90, 100 and beyond is like being in the dead of winter in northern parts of the country — or just call it quits with all the seasonal symbolism, which seems like a good idea.
But here’s the point: The sense of foreboding in fall is real, whether it comes to some in September (like Sinatra) or others a month or two later (like me).
The nostalgia for autumn experienced by former residents is just that: “A sentimental or wistful affection for the past, typically a person or place with happy personal associations,” as the dictionary defines nostalgia.
And that’s something both current residents and former residents can share: Warm memories of the “golden warm” autumns of years past.
So begins the wistful, beautiful ballad “The September of My Years” (lyrics by Sammy Cahn, music by Jimmy Van Heusen, sung by Frank Sinatra ).
And now here we are, in early November, smack dab in the middle of fall, the time of year that such songs — and popular culture as a whole — liken metaphorically to life’s slow winding down.
“The golden warm September of my years,” crooned Sinatra in the soaring finale of the 1965 song.
Now, understand, he was talking about turning 50, for godsakes! That seems a little panicky to me. Sinatra himself had more than three decades of life remaining, after all.
But here’s how he felt, as spoken in his introduction to the song, which led off the album of the same name:
“Ah yes, 50. September. Father time with a frost warning. My leaves are turning. How green they were, and how bright they are. And how wonderful my love affair with life.”
Sounds like a guy facing imminent death, not simply midlife. Maybe he should have waited for the November of his years to turn on the melancholy.
(Side Note: Sinatra’s take on being an old guy at age 50 sounded quite accurate to me when I listened to that song in my pre-teen years. Side Note #2: Yes, I was geeky enough to listen to a lot of Sinatra along with rock n roll as a youth. In fact, when I re-visited “The September of My Years” for this post, I remembered every word enough to sing along.)
What got me thinking about this whole autumn/end-of-life thing were the latest of the annual laments by several former residents of the Northeast.
“I really miss the fall,” say these people, many now living in such almost-perfect-climate areas as Southern California. They remember the brilliant tree colors and the end of hot summer days, bringing the welcome change of clothing to ward off chilly days. There’s hot apple cider. There’s Friday night football, bundled up in the grandstands.
When I received one of these sentiments in an email last month, I had to lay down my bottom-line: Fall means winter is coming. It means get ready: Wrap up those outdoor projects, make those final lawn preparations, get out the snow shovels and roof rake, put the air conditioners back in storage, arrange the furnace tune-up, store the dehumidifier, crank up the humidifiers, put out extra dCon for the rodents now seeking out the warmth of your home from the season’s first outdoor chills, air out the winter clothing, check out the ice-melting salt supply, and take the car in for a final check of tire treads and the necessities for safe travel in snow, ice and freezing temperatures.
Accompanying all of this are the mental preparations. Soon, life will be full of regular snow shoveling, gray days for weeks on end, slippery roads and additional challenges to just getting through the day. You better have your mind and body ready.
Of course, for many, getting into the September of their years in the Northeast generally means getting out of town for the Novembers, Decembers, Januarys, Februarys and Marches of their calendars, if one can afford it.
Thousands of these senior “snowbirds” flee to warmer climes, primarily Florida. They may stay a few weeks or months or the entire winter. That way they must be able to truly enjoy the wondrous early fall days, knowing the coming winter days are for others to dread. Warm weather is in their future
Meanwhile, just how do the seasons compare to the stages of life in areas where the weather remains pretty constant? There is no great turning of leaves, as Sinatra felt happening to himself upon turning 50. No frost warning.
Yes, there is some change in foliage and lowering of temperatures, even in the warmer areas, but nothing close to what we experience in the Northeast.
What we do have in common in the United States, at least, is the shortening of days, as noted in another Sinatra classic from the same 1965 album, “September Song”:
“Oh it’s a long long while from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September.”
But even this tune — composed by Kurt Weill, with lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, introduced by Walter Huston in the 1938 Broadway musical “Knickerbocker Holiday” — quickly gets back to whole leaf thing:
“When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame, one hasn’t got time for the waiting game.”
Really, then, you can’t really tie the process of aging to the passing of seasons in warm-winter locales. The Octobers and Novembers of Southern California are really like the Aprils and Marches — pretty nice every day, certainly not presenting nature’s bleak and near-death surroundings like those of cold climates.
But even in four-season territory it’s a little heavy-handed to say September is time to fear the end is near. Around here, even before our current global warm-up, there still are plenty of warm days. The weather really is more reminiscent of summer than foreboding the arrival of fall.
And with the time change — putting the clocks back an hour — now shifted to early November, even the universal gloom of shortened days doesn’t hit until a bit later than the old days.
Still, those actual climate conditions in September, October, November and December around here do actually correspond to how the geezer years generally unfold.
September really is like 50 — not the “Grim Reaper is knocking,” golden warm 50s of Sinatra’s “The September of My Years” but the more realistic “gotta slow down and face how my life has shaped up” 50s that most experience.
There’s still plenty of bounce left in those 50-year-old steps, still “a lotta livin’ to do,” as fictional rocker Conrad Birdie might say. Most of us are still a several years away from finding out the grim toll our early years have taken on our bodies and minds — the aches and pains that come with the deterioration of our joints, teeth, senses and brain cells.
However, we do begin realizing in our 50s that “what you see is what you get” (to quote yet another song). The career path, marital situation, child-rearing choices and other life-shaping decisions are pretty set, or at least in need of immediate attention if change is desired. Hence, we get the “mid-life crises” years, when people either rebel against much of what happened in the first five decades of life or come to accept their fate, some happily some glumly.
Then comes the October chill (now we are talking "frost warning"), the November darkness, the December freeze and grayness. So, October can be 60 — time to shore up those “winter” preparations like living wills, retirement funds, home down-sizing, etc. — and November is 70, which is closer to Sinatra’s gloomy take on 50 (without the leaf-changing analogy), while December is like being 80, a time to hunker down and tough out the now-daunting challenges of every-day life.
“Oh the days dwindle down to a precious few, September . . . November,” goes the final stanza of ‘September Song.”
Beyond that, well, there is the deep freeze of January and the depressing winter linger of February and March. So, so you could choose to continue that whole lifetime comparison thing — being 90, 100 and beyond is like being in the dead of winter in northern parts of the country — or just call it quits with all the seasonal symbolism, which seems like a good idea.
But here’s the point: The sense of foreboding in fall is real, whether it comes to some in September (like Sinatra) or others a month or two later (like me).
The nostalgia for autumn experienced by former residents is just that: “A sentimental or wistful affection for the past, typically a person or place with happy personal associations,” as the dictionary defines nostalgia.
And that’s something both current residents and former residents can share: Warm memories of the “golden warm” autumns of years past.