Old September

School didn’t start, then, until after Labor Day—probably because it was so hot before then that our brains refused to work in un-air conditioned classrooms, and no teacher in his or her right mind wanted to deal with sweaty, unfocused teenagers with greasy faces who stank of sticky 6-12 gnat repellent and raging hormones.

Shopping for school was fun, though. I remember the cedary smell of new pencils, with shavings that curled happily into gray hand-cranked sharpeners that clung to the walls of our classrooms; the snappy click-click of new ballpoint pens and the careful slurping up of thick black ink from glass bottles into old-fashioned fountain pens; the hard bright snaps of shiny three-ring binders; the rustle of new lined notebook paper with holes already punched; the time spent carefully lettering plastic index tabs in bold red, green, blue, and yellow for English, math, science, civics. If I was lucky, I got to pick out a couple of new skirts and blouses, a new snuggly sweater, a pair of soft leather Capezio flats in the year’s latest color, and a fresh lipstick and bottle of nail polish chosen after careful perusal of the latest sultry Revlon ads in Glamour and Mademoiselle magazines.

Orlando in the late 1950s and early 1960s was a sleepy little cow town. The only real shopping districts were on Orange Avenue—where Ivey’s and Dickson-Ives department stores faced off on one corner—and the specialty shops in upscale Winter Park. Drive farther out of town in any direction, and what you found were used car lots, cow pastures, or orange groves as far as the eye could see. No Disney.

September meant weekdays filled with classes and evenings filled with homework, Thursday afternoon pep rallies, Friday night football games with friends, giant floodlights, Coke, and popcorn. September was languid Saturday mornings with the weekend stretching out ahead like a river and, often, Saturday night movies. Sundays were church in the morning, after-church lunch at Morrison’s cafeteria, and late afternoon drives with my parents.

“Let’s go for a drive!” my dad would cry, and clap his hands, and we’d pile into the car just for the fun of driving around, seeing what we could discover on back roads outside of town when the light took on a golden glow and began to slant in shimmery rays through oaks and Spanish moss, through tall pines and spreading orange groves, with the smell of wood smoke from bonfires and cooking fires wisping through the countryside.

Sometime in September, usually right around my birthday near the equinox, we could tell that the quality of light was changing and the weather was shifting, too. Out there on the dirt back roads between Gotha and Windermere, Clermont and Ocoee, DeLand and Cassadaga, early twilight brought a cooldown or even a chill, and we’d reach for the sweaters we’d brought in the car and start murmuring happily about the hot cocoa, marshmallows, and chocolate chip cookies that waited for us at home. On the best of these late afternoon drives, we’d watch the harvest moon come up over the groves, big and orange and brilliant in the smoky blue-dark dusk.

Back then, September was truly the beginning of fall—the month of welcome relief after the long, oppressive summer heat. I’ve never been able to decide what caused my spirits to lift more—my birthday, the new school year, or that first beautiful fall chill. I suspect the answer was “all of the above.”

The memories of those long-past autumns haunt me now, not so much because my parents are dead and buried—although that’s certainly a factor—but mainly because lately we are well into October or even November before we get the fall cooldown that was once September’s hallmark. I live two hours north of Orlando now, so I reckon from past experience we should be feeling fall sooner, not later, but that’s not the case.

Climate change, they say. Global warming, they say. And while there are naysayers, it does seem as if a great majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that something is going on that’s given the earth a fever, and we human beings may be the germs that are causing that disease.

So lately, fall has been a disappointment. My birthdays come and go, and harvest moons rise and set, with no perceptible change in the weather. My Halloween socks lie unused in their dresser drawer until almost Thanksgiving. Instead of sharpening pencils or filling fountain pens and squeezing into a rickety wooden desk chair, I take my seat on a Steelcase ergonomic marvel at my big-screen iMac. It’s not school that occupies my thoughts now, but writing, drought, and the sorry state of our rivers and freshwater springs.

I do still get a rush, though, when the back-to-school shopping flyers start to appear. I think I’ll take a Facebook friend’s advice and do some school shopping next fall and donate what I buy to Stuff the Bus, a local organization that accepts donations for needy students.

Maybe it’s because I’d given up hope, or maybe it’s just a total quirk, or maybe it’s some other reason that I can’t know, but we’ve been blessed this year with what’s felt, at least for a couple of weeks, like an old September. The first break in the heat came just before Labor Day, with another, longer, cooler break—nights down in the 50s and highs in the 80s—a couple of weeks after that. I’ve been tempted to clap my hands and holler, “Let’s go for a drive!” but with gas at $3.50 a gallon, I’ve hesitated.

But tomorrow is the last day of the month, and like a gift, we’re getting a cold front, with forecast lows in the 50s for September 30 and 40s for October 1. Maybe I should throw a party.

Or maybe I should just take a long drive out an old country road. I’ll take a sweater, and I can look forward to a big steaming mug of hot chocolate and marshmallows once I get home. Maybe the fragrant smoke from wood fires will waft like ghosts through the late afternoon sun that glows in golden shafts through big live oak branches and Spanish moss. Maybe I can spot the fingernail-thin crescent moon, just past new and beginning to wax, near the Western horizon. In a perfect world, the moon would ride there accompanied by bright Venus or shiny Jupiter, sparkling like heavenly messengers.

Yup, I think I’ll take that drive, because this might be the last old September I’ll ever have.

Thanks to Forrest Stowe for the use of his photograph, above.

Mourning Doves and Mahakala

It is my last trip to KTD for the foreseeable future, unless I win the Lotto or identify some kind of funding source other than my paying job—which doesn’t really pay enough to support the lifestyle to which I would like to become accustomed, summer and fall in Woodstock, winter and spring in Florida.

I am sitting on the patio outside the old Meads Mountain House, eating lunch with friends, and I notice a tiny chickadee at the newly-installed bird feeder. Such a cute, sweet little black-capped bird!

We have had a break in the winter weather. Days are sunny, and warm enough to sit outside. After the winter we have had in Florida—and the snow that fell here in the Catskills a couple of weeks ago—I feel blessed with this springlike gift from the gods.

I have come to hear my refuge lama, the incomparable Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, give the final teaching in a two-year series about Machik Labdron and her practice of severance of fixation on the self.

Yes, I am blessed indeed.

One of my favorite things to do when I am at KTD is to sit in on the evening practice of Mahakala, the great protector of the Karma Kagyu lineage.

I love the practice when it has the full complement of instruments, especially when there are enough people so that two drums can be used. The sound of those two drums always reminds me of two hearts, beating together.

But tonight there are only three people in the shrine room for Mahakala—Tenzin Chonyi or Tenzin-la, who is the president of KTD; a lovely young woman whom I do not know who is spinning a prayer wheel with very little effort; and me.

Tenzin-la, who was sent here years ago by His Holiness the 16^th Karmapa, is the only one of us who is actually doing the Mahakala practice, so there are no drums tonight.

We are about a half-hour into the hour-long practice when I notice that I am sitting across from one of the loveliest Guru Rinpoche thangkas I have ever seen, and it looks OLD. I usually sit on the other side of the room, right underneath and next to the thangka, so this feels like the first time I have ever actually seen it—and it takes my breath away.

We are about 45 minutes into the practice when I realize that Tenzin-la is chanting without a text. He must know this practice by heart!

I am stunned. I cannot imagine how many times someone would have to do Mahakala in order to be able to do the whole practice without a text.

At the end of the hour, I thank Tenzin-la and approach the young woman with the prayer wheel. I can’t think of anything intelligent to say in praise of her efforts, so I try something lame: “Doesn’t your hand get tired?” I ask, “Or, have you done this so much that you are used to it?”

“Oh, no, it’s very easy,” she says, “look,” and very generously shows me how she has attached an amber-colored glass crystal ball to the wheel as a weight, so that it practically spins by itself! I must remember this, I think, when I get a prayer wheel.

As I leave the shrine building, I am struck once again by the beauty of the mountains to the north, still dappled with snow in the evening light. On the hill above the shrine, above the line of prayer flags, I hear a rustling in the leaves—probably a squirrel, but I stop to look just in case we might be having another visit from the black bear who came down the hill for a torma feast last summer.

Tenzin-la comes along behind me and we say hello. He stops.

“Do you know what bird that is, that makes that sound?” he asks.

I don’t hear it, so I ask him to describe the sound. “Oooo-oooo,” he says.

“Well, it could be an owl,” I offer.

“No, it’s not an owl,” he says, sure of himself.

Then I hear it, clearly. “Wooo-ooo, hooo, hooo, hooo.”

“It’s a dove!” I cry, pleased that I can identify the bird by its voice. “A mourning dove.” I describe the bird to Tenzin-la, who listens again and says, “Mourning dove,” and heads across the parking lot to his home.

The dove cries again.

In an instant, I am transported from the Catskills in 2010 to 1956 and a wonderful old two-story, rambling Florida house with a great front screened porch at 521 Revere Street, near Lake Dot, near downtown Orlando, Florida—my great-aunt Grace’s house and realty office, where she lives with her husband and where my maternal grandmother and great-grandmother have a small apartment.

I am nine years old, and my parents and I have moved to Florida from Decatur, Georgia, and are living at my aunt’s house until our new home on the west side of town is finished.

The sun is hot, but there are fans in the house and lots of shade trees and cool breezes in the evening, and from dawn to dusk and sometimes even after dark we hear the soft “Wooo-ooo, hooo, hooo, hooo” cries of the mourning doves.

My grandmother and I grow closer and closer as she indulges me with scary stories and encourages my love for the mysterious, the psychic, the supernatural.

My great-grandmother insults me by calling my favorite Disney cartoon character, Peter Pan (I love him because he can fly!), “an insect.” I am not sure why I take such offense at this, but I do.

My great-aunt’s husband entertains me by occasionally speaking in a deep voice through the old house’s heating vent system. “This is the voice from the hole,” he announces with great solemnity, and his deep echoing voice elicits shrieks of delight from me and sparks laughter even from the adults.

And of course there are my parents, who take great care to do everything parents must do to make this childish nine-year-old feel safe and loved in a new home.

Amazing. Here I am on a mountain, at Karmapa’s monastery in the Catskills—yet in my mind, I have instantly been transported 1100 miles south and 54 years back in time! How is this possible?

Because of a bird call?

Of course they are all dead now—Grace and Buz, my great-aunt and her husband; my mom and dad; Momie, my great-grandmother; and my beloved grandmother, Mama Kitty, the person in my family to whom I always felt closest.

These memories are a lesson in impermanence, yes—yet so much more.

I wonder how it is possible, now that they are gone, to still feel such love for all of them.

When I was small, they kept me safe. When I was stubborn, they loved me. When I fell down off my bike and skinned my knees, they kissed the hurts. When I was naughty, they showed me what it meant to be kind and considerate of others. When I was selfish, they taught me how to give.

And it seems I only repaid them, in the end, with more bad behavior.

Standing here in the parking lot, listening to the call of the mourning dove, I feel, very viscerally, the truth of the words of the Four Vows, which I have taped above my writing area at home:

However immeasurable sentient beings, I vow to save them.

However inexhaustible the passions, I vow to extinguish them.

However immeasurable the dharmas, I vow to master them.

However incomparable the Buddha’s truth, I vow to attain it.

I could mourn those who are gone, or I could take a lesson from my teachers and wonder how is it possible that in my 62^nd year, I finally have come to realize the depth of compassion that wakes that sleeping giant, bodhicitta?

It is only through the blessings of my dear teachers, I think, that this waking is even possible.

Something inside me feels cracked open, like a winged seed bursting forth from its pod, about to take flight—or like a small bird emerging from the egg.

I’m home now, and spring is coming after a long, cold winter.

The beautyberry is leafing out. Cardinals and sparrows and bluebirds and, yes, even a mourning dove are showing interest in the bird feeder in the crape myrtle in the back yard.

I’m sitting in the dining room, my favorite room in my house, eating a couple of slices of pizza. Outside in the garden spot, in the beautyberry that’s just beginning to leaf out, two chickadees alight on the same branch. They are so small! And so utterly beautiful.

I watch them, fascinated. This is why I love this room—for its view of the yard, especially at sunset.

As I watch, the chickadee on the higher part of the branch reaches down to give the lower bird what looks exactly like a tiny bird kiss!

Yes, it’s spring.

The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you, not knowing

How blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.

They’re in each other all along.

-Rumi