No sooner does September roll around and I’m smack in that back-to-school mindset that to this day energizes me.

Get to a certain age and you find yourself thinking more and more about the passage of time.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that the lion and the lamb of March finally brought relief from a winter of much too much snow?

Why do those lazy, hazy days of summer seem to roll in and out in a flash?

And how is it that no sooner has September arrived and I’m smack in that back-to-school mindset that to this day still energizes me?

The other night a mountain lion surfaced in a dream, not so much stalking as nudging me along. I could give any number of reasons why this strong, sleek, beautiful creature paid a visit to my unconscious at this particular moment in time. But the most compelling is her symbolic presence in my recently completed novel.

Known for her fierceness in Native American lore, she is also the totemic embodiment of determination.

I take my cues.

Leaves have already begun to lose their vibrancy. Autumn is in the air.

The light is changing by the day.

Time for a new project.

To shake off the melancholy and nostalgia September brings, triggered by the fading leaves and memories of long-gone family gatherings to celebrate the Jewish New Year, with its message of renewal and redemption.

Memories are fluid. If you’re lucky, you get to soften with age and the hard memories that make the body contract with bitterness or anger loosen their grip. There’s no real wishing them away, there’s just the acceptance that the past may inform the present and future, but it doesn’t have to rule it. You can’t go home again if the only thing to greet you are ghosts from generations past.

Ingrained patterns die hard. Those freewheeling summer days may have always been a welcome break from school but come September and I’m headed (in my memory) to that stationery and school supply shop around the corner from my home, filled with the particular scent of pencil lead and leatherette pencil cases. Fresh notebooks and briefcases (no backpacks back then), meant a clean slate of things to learn.

Opening to the first page of a brand-new black and white composition book, writing my name on the cover, was a rite of passage. The ruled lines on each page were an invitation to take notes as neatly as I could with my awkward left-handed scrawl, to answer questions a teacher asked.

Etched into the marble pattern would be a call to the writer I would become. Writing in the spiral-bound notebooks used in upper grades was never as satisfying.

For all my excitement at the thought of what a new grade had in store for me, one year threw me off balance. . . .

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