When the Days Begin to Fold In.
On September, sweater weather, and the comfort of returning indoors
Years ago, I worked as a paralegal in the Village of Bronxville, New York. The Metro-North Railroad ran through the center of the village, carrying commuters into New York City. Bronxville was both a wealthy bedroom community and home to affluent retirees who met friends for lunch, attended DAR meetings and flower shows, and moved through the village at an unhurried pace. With its small train station, clustered shops, and carefully arranged streets, it looked like the village in a train set—almost too perfectly composed to be real.
The illusion was occasionally disturbed when an older resident, parked nose-in outside a bank or restaurant, put the car into drive instead of reverse and proceeded through the front of the building. This happened more than once. No one was killed, thankfully, and the regularity with which it occurred became one of the village’s more peculiar features.
In late November, I would leave the law office at four or five in the afternoon and it would already be dark. The air was nippy and crisp. Streetlights glowed along the sidewalks, and the illuminated storefronts seemed to invite people out of the darkness and into the warmth.
I loved it.
I was thrilled to be outside in the dark at four o’clock, walking through the cold air beneath the streetlights. It was not gloomy or depressing. It was invigorating. And then there was the pleasure of returning home to warmth and refuge.
Sublime.
I still feel that way when the days begin to shorten. I realize September is technically summer for most of the month, and in Ohio it may continue behaving like summer well past the point when anyone has asked it to. The temperature can be ninety degrees while stores are displaying pumpkins, wool scarves, and enough cinnamon-scented merchandise to make my eyes water from the parking lot. Still, something has begun to change.
The light falls differently. Darkness comes a little earlier. Every now and then, usually in the morning, there is the faintest crispness in the air—a small suggestion that summer’s tenure will not last forever.
I am ready for it.
Most people seem to mourn the end of summer. They speak wistfully about long evenings, swimming pools, bare feet, and eating outdoors. I understand the appeal in theory. In practice, Midwestern summer eventually becomes a long, humid assault. By August, the air is heavy, the garden is tired, and I am tired of perspiring while standing perfectly still.
Years ago, in a poem that appeared almost fully formed at approximately two in the morning, I described it as “Midwestern summer’s tyranny.” This still seems accurate.
Fall, on the other hand, is fabulously beautiful. The trees blaze into shades of gold, crimson, rust, and ochre. Leaves swirl across the road and escape from newly raked piles. The sky becomes a deeper blue, and the light takes on a golden slant that makes even familiar places look briefly enchanted.
And then there is sweater weather. Oh, how I love sweater weather.
I love sweaters. I love pulling my arms into the sleeves and stepping outside into air cool enough to feel clean and bracing. I love putting an extra blanket on the bed, drinking something warm, and finding that the cats have suddenly developed a renewed appreciation for their snuggly and warm beds. Cats, of course, are keenly attuned to seasonal changes—especially those that may affect the availability of a warm lap.
But what I love most may be the days getting shorter.
I know this is not a popular opinion. Earlier darkness is usually discussed as an unfortunate development, somewhere between road construction and the arrival of cold-and-flu season. People complain that it is dark before dinner and begin counting the days until spring.
I understand that darkness can be difficult, particularly for people who experience seasonal depression. The diminishing light can have a very real effect on mood, energy, sleep, and motivation. Winter is not gentle with everyone.
But I experience darkness differently. When evening comes early and I am inside looking out, the house feels more sheltering. The windows become a boundary between the cold darkness and the warmth inside. A lamp glows in the corner. The cats settle into their preferred locations, generally involving as much physical contact with me as they can negotiate. The day begins to close around us.
I feel snug.
There is a word for the psychological comfort of enclosure: refuge. We need places from which we can look out without feeling entirely exposed. A home lit from within on a dark evening can offer that sense of refuge. The world is still there, but for a little while, we are held apart from its noise and demands.
Perhaps this is why the Bronxville memory has remained so vivid. The glowing storefronts offered small pockets of warmth against the November darkness. They did not eliminate the darkness; the darkness made them more inviting. And knowing I would soon return home to my own refuge made the walk through that nippy air even more pleasurable.
The earlier darkness also seems to give permission to turn inward. Summer is expansive. It beckons us outside and keeps extending the day as though we should be doing something useful with every last minute of sunlight. Fall asks something different. It gathers us in.
Perhaps that is part of September’s emotional pull. It marks the beginning of a gradual contraction—not a collapse or a retreat, but a drawing inward. Trees begin sending their energy back toward their roots. Gardens relinquish what they have grown. Animals prepare nests, dens, and hiding places. The natural world understands that constant expansion is impossible.
Human beings are not always so sensible.
We tend to treat expansion as evidence that life is going well. We should be growing, producing, improving, connecting, traveling, exercising, organizing, and possibly learning conversational Italian. Contraction sounds suspiciously like failure. We rarely consider that pulling inward may also be part of a healthy rhythm.
In yoga, the breath teaches this endlessly. We expand and contract. We inhale and exhale. Neither movement is sustainable without the other. We cannot spend our lives inhaling.
Long ago, I wrote about the contractions and expansions of my own life—periods of grief and desolation followed by unexpected growth. I ended that reflection with the words, “I am expanding…and contracting…and expanding. Life breathing me.”
The seasons breathe us, too.
Fall reminds us that contraction has its own beauty. It offers a quieter kind of abundance: apples and chrysanthemums, soup simmering on the stove, paint and yarn waiting indoors, the first sweater pulled from the back of the closet. It is the pleasure of returning home when darkness has already arrived and seeing warm light through the windows.
The poem that came to me in the middle of that sleepless night traveled through the entire year, but winter was always its destination. It began, “I find solace in the blunt barrenness of winter,” and ended with my waiting for “a quiet winter’s smile.”
Apparently, even at two in the morning, I knew where I was headed.
September is not winter, of course. Around here, it may not even be reliably fall. But it is the threshold. It carries the first promise of crisp air, flaming trees, long evenings, and the inward turn I have been waiting for.
The days begin to fold in.
And gladly, so do I.
