September for many means a start to school. For those of us that dwell in the desert, we have been in classes for several weeks. For me September means quilts. I am a desert dweller but every September I meander up to the cooler plains of the Grand Canyon State to quilt. I go with my mother. It is our time, every year. It is odd that as a child I did not think that one day I would long for time with my mom. She worked and I was busy. That has changed. I realize the time is more important as her hair becomes a bit more snowy and her back a bit more bent. I see her growing older and my time slipping away. While I know our years are still many, I am painfully aware that the time slipping quietly through the cracks of each year.
I became a mother just a year out of my teens. I was young but not too young. I was blessed over the next six years to have four children. Each precious. Each unique. Each grew quickly. One day I was the mother of four children under the age of six Soon they were all in either middle or high school. They kept maturing and growing. Each year as September rolled around, the school would provide an image of each of my offspring most often with a bland blue background. I would purchase the largest package to pass on to the grandparents, aunts and uncles. I would pry back the metal tabs remove the collection photos. I would review the years quickly in those images and then place the current image to the top of the stack replace the photos cardboard back press down the metal tabs and hang them on the wall. The new photo would stand sentry for a year until the next years would take its place. Look how they've grown.
When I became a mother I thought the day they (my children) had grown and moved on I would miss them but had no idea what a longing I would have to share in their lives. As of today, three of my four children have "flown the coop". I realize that time is precious. I am reminded of the song "Time in a Bottle." Never were those words more meaningful than this year. My son informed us on a hot May afternoon that he had applied and was accepted to Northern Arizona University. I swelled with pride. I was excited when he told us that he had been accepted to the school of his choice. It seemed so very far away. After all he had just graduated from high school.
As August crept in and stole away my son. He left for school. One day he was there, the next, gone. I still walk in his room and miss him. I am trying to be strong, I try to not say how much I miss him when he calls. I don't want him to know how empty I feel without the burst of laughter that would come bellowing from his room. The thud of his grownup frame as it tumbles down the stairs. The hugs he always gave when my day was not going so well. I realize that time has moved all too quickly.
There may come a day when September rolls around that one of my children join me on an annual trek. Perhaps not quilting, which is my mothers love, but something, something that we can enjoy together. My eldest art, my next cooking, my boy, games and my youngest, perhaps a theater event. But we will do it every year, it will be a way to cork the leaking bottle of time. Today I sit looking at my mother, we are quilting today. I watch as she pushes fabric through her machine, creating a quilt that one day may lie on my bed, and remind me of how we patched our own bottle.
