Septembers Gone
Posted on October 2, 2016 by bob in OffTheBeatenPath
Had she not gone to be with the Lord three years ago, she’d have turned 98 last month. In some ways, the years since my Granny’s death seem long, the void created by her passing more and more apparent each year. But in other ways, the years since, filled with the joy of growing children with daily needs, have accelerated the passage of time. Time itself is a fickle thing, sometimes passing too quickly, other times not quickly enough. Each of us uses markers – usually life events, whether recurring or one-time – to gauge its passage. The gradual transition of summer into fall – also known as September – is one of mine.
My sister and I spent parts of each summer with Granny and Papa, whose five wooded acres were a child’s perfect playground. Armed with a Daisy Red Ryder, I dutifully guarded Granny’s last-of-the-season September tomatoes from flocks of thieving grackles who bombarded her hilltop garden. More than a few fell to my keen aim. When I graduated to a pellet gun, not a squirrel on their hickory, oak and sweet gum-dotted property was safe.
When the supper hour came Granny would walk to the edge of the gulley and call down to the bottom. There, we’d dammed up the creek with the intention of later destroying the obstruction in order to flood the mock encampment of plastic Army men so we could launch an amphibious rescue of the toy soldiers. An elaborate, dirty and time consuming operation, it always left us hungry for seconds of the chicken and dumplings she’d had simmering all afternoon. Halfway up the hill I’d get winded, but then I’d catch a whiff of supper, my stomach would growl and I’d quicken my pace.
After we’d eaten, the four of us would sit on the back deck as the day came to a close, children chasing fireflies, all watching the twilight shadows of late summer shift through the tree branches and eventually fade into darkness. By Thanksgiving the trees would be bare and the roar of the highway on the far ridge would carry all the way across the bottom. But in September, with most of the creek bottom still summer-green, the cars on the highway were invisible and their traffic merely a muted hum.
The full moon of September also marked the last time the bream would spawn, or “go on the bed,” for the year. The fishing would be at its best just before and after the peak of the full moon, which was when Granny would time our fishing trips, just as she had the previous four months. Only September was our last shot. We’d perch on the bank, she in a lawn chair and me straddling the five-gallon bucket we worked all afternoon to fill with thick, skillet-sized coppernose bream and the occasional channel cat or bass looking for an easy meal in the shallows. Some days we fished with crickets, others with “wigglers,” both from the bait shop near their home. At the end of every trip was the guarantee of a fried fish dinner. Any turtles we caught went into a second bucket, Granny’s longtime housekeeper all too happy to take them off our hands knowing she’d likely get no more until the bream-bed fishing ensued again the following May.
Granny was a September baby, but whenever someone tried to organize a get-together for her birthday, she was always reluctant. An infant at the time of her mother’s death, Granny became a caregiver for younger half-siblings several years later after her father remarried. From there forward, taking care of family was exactly what she did. She didn’t like anyone making a fuss over her, preferring to fuss over her three children, their spouses and her seven grandchildren. Still, we’d occasionally succeed in convincing her to let us celebrate her for a change.
After I went off to school, whenever home I’d try and make it down to Granny’s to visit and take care of odd jobs for her, especially after Papa died. We’d catch up on life over a glass of milk and a couple of her famous blondies or piece of toasted pound cake. Then, I’d go about filling the bird feeders, climbing up in the attic and changing the A/C filter, fertilizing the pond, even tightening door knobs. Later, when she moved to assisted living, the to-do list shrank. I could accept the lack of blondies and pound cake, but with each visit there was unspoken sense of urgency, as if time was slipping away.
When she went in the hospital in late August three years ago, we knew there’d be no recovery. Her death a few weeks shy of her 95th birthday made for a very different September than anyone had planned. But despite the fact the guest of honor could not attend, we celebrated Granny’s birthday and her life nonetheless.
With each year that passes, memories, like pictures, fade just a tad around the edges. My grandparents’ five acres was sold not long after Granny died and as it always does, life has gone on. But some memories remain vividly etched in our minds.
Down in the creek bed on those five acres are the remnants of a small, forgotten army outpost. It has seen many floods, and green plastic toy soldiers litter the ground. The bream in the pond still go on the bed each full summer moon, just like their ancestors did. The hilltop garden has long been overtaken by grass, but if you look closely, the trees nearby still show the scars of many an errant BB and pellet, reminders of a childhood of Septembers gone.
And if you walk the edge of the gulley around supper time, the highway traffic a steady hum in the distance, you might still catch the faint whiff of chicken and dumplings on the breeze.
Niko Corley, a USCG-licensed charter boat captain, spends his free time on the water or in the woods. Contact him at niko.corley@gmail.com.
