Shoulder Season

I received the “They’re back!” text from my friend Greg in Oxford, Miss., on Monday evening.“They” were the Halloween inflatables festooning his neighbor’s lawn, as depicted in an accompanying photo: a jack-o’-lantern with a ghost flailing from each eye, Skeleton Medusa, two spiders the size of Volkswagen Beetles.

Greg knows I’m appalled at the ever-earlier arrival of spooky-season décor.Mid-September, still summer by the astronomical calendar.I went to the website of “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” for some sanity.

No comfort there: “Thanksgiving Weather Forecast 2024 — With U.S.Travel Map!” the headline chirped, gleefully premature.

“Who decides on the seasons,” I searched, just to be a brat.I know what’s happening: Tomorrow morning, at 8:44 a.m., the sun, heading southward, will cross the celestial equator.

No matter what post-Labor Day stalwarts on Cape Cod told my colleague Steven Kurutz about September’s being a summer month, if you’re currently residing in the Northern Hemisphere, the argument’s over: Tomorrow’s fall.I’m relieved, at this point, to stop the charade; enough with this yearning.It was 82 degrees in New York City last weekend, but it wasn’t really hot.

It was a noncommittal hot, bright but withholding.When the sun went behind a building, it felt like an abandonment.

I picture the months of September through December as a long slide.You’re at the top at Labor Day, maybe holding on to the railing, afraid to let go of August.

By the time you get to the equinox, the descent is fully underway.You’re picking up momentum: Oct.

1, Halloween, Election Day, changing the clocks; buckle in, here come the holidays.You land at the end of December, with a flying leap into the new year (if you’re blessed), or with a thud, in a puddle (if you’re me), or you just land on your feet (a good goal for all of us).“Don’t talk to me of solemn days / In autumn’s time of splendor,” Paul Laurence Dunbar wrot...