Between Flip-Flops and Flannel

September is a strange month.

It can’t seem to decide what it wants to be. One minute it’s 85 degrees, and I’m still wearing flip-flops. The next, every store has apparently declared war on summer and filled the shelves with pumpkins, orange decorations and enough cinnamon-scented products to choke a horse.

Pumpkin spice season has arrived. Personally, I don’t understand the enthusiasm. I don’t want my coffee to taste like a candle, and I certainly don’t need pumpkin-flavored versions of things that never needed to be pumpkined.

But apparently I’m in the minority, because September has spoken.

It’s not summer anymore, but it isn’t really fall yet. It’s the awkward middle child of the calendar, caught somewhere between flip-flops and flannel.

September is basically the month equivalent of someone who can’t decide what they want for dinner. And somehow, while September is having its identity crisis, the rest of us are expected to get our lives together.

School starts. Sports start. Schedules change. Alarm clocks become our enemies again. Suddenly everyone needs to be somewhere at a different time, preferably in a different direction. The lazy days of summer disappear almost overnight.

For three months, we’ve been operating on a loose schedule of, “We’ll figure it out later.” Then September arrives and says, “Actually, you have somewhere to be at 7:15 tomorrow morning.”

Excuse me? I wasn’t emotionally prepared for that.

There is also something about September that makes time feel particularly rude. Maybe it’s because we’re coming off summer, when the days seem endless. Kids are home, the sun stays out forever, and somehow you can convince yourself that there is plenty of time left. Then September shows up, and suddenly you’re looking at the calendar, wondering how we may be already here.

The kids are another year older. Last year's clothes don’t fit anymore. The shoes they swore were perfectly comfortable three months ago apparently became medieval torture devices over the summer. And you realize that the version of your family you had in June doesn’t quite exist anymore.

We talk about milestones — first steps, first words, kindergarten, graduations, driver’s licenses, college. But there are hundreds of smaller moments in between—the last summer before they stop wanting to go places with you. The last time they ask you to help them with something they eventually learn to do themselves. The last year all the kids are in the same house every morning before school. 

You don’t always recognize those moments while they’re happening. Sometimes you only notice after they've passed. And maybe that’s another reason September feels different. It’s a reset button. Not quite a new year, but close enough.

There’s something about buying school supplies, cleaning out closets, reorganizing schedules and realizing the year is somehow three-quarters over that makes you start taking inventory of your life. What changed? What didn’t? What did I think I’d accomplish this year? And why is December apparently only a few weeks away?

September makes us start thinking about what’s next. The holidays are coming. Winter is coming. Another year is slowly winding down. And yet, there’s still a little summer hanging around.

Maybe that’s why I like September. It doesn't ask us to let go of summer all at once. It’s giving us a transition. A chance to slow down for a minute and notice that things are changing — even if we’re not quite ready for them to. Because eventually the leaves will change, the mornings will get cold, and we’ll wonder where summer went. But for now, I’ll take the weird weather, the school schedules, the pumpkin-spice invasion and the occasional 80-degree day thrown in the middle of fall.

September may not know what season it wants to be. But honestly, neither do I. I’m perfectly happy somewhere between flip-flops and flannel.