I love waking and making you ube pancakes, purple yam staining the batter a jubilant violet. Would you care for maple-flavored “sausage” (jackfruit, not pieces of a dead animal) on the side? Fresh-squeezed sumo orange juice? I swear it tastes different than your average navel oranges.
I walk Gigi and we are startled by Dameon (he once spelled his name for me) who calls out, loud and gruff from a bench, “Hi!” He quickly apologizes when he sees us both jump.
“Got called into work,” he shrugs. “And everyone’s got a September birthday, I’ve sent twenty texts already.”
“Today’s my cousin’s birthday!” I say.
“Tell your cousin, Happy Birthday, cuz!”
I laugh, and I actually do.
We keep walking past the Japanese steakhouse, which seems to go on forever. Some mornings it smells of stale bread and cooking oil. You can tell who closed efficiently by the neat rows of chairs, angled just so; other mornings it’s chaos, with paper chef hats and chopsticks scattered for squirrels to drag away.
The storefront of a hair salon is always my favorite, and I’ve written about it before. They save me with their windows, dressing them for each season. Now it’s pumpkins and paper leaves, burnt orange, yellow and brown, a small mercy in a region where seasons hardly shift. I don’t want to rely only on the way September sunlight hits differently.
That’s what I tell you while we eat our ube pancakes and you say, “Oh my god, these are so good.” Much to my satisfaction.
“Do you notice that you can tell it’s September?”
The August clouds, giant and stunning, have left us. Neon oranges give way to pale blues.
“I do notice,” you say.
The whole room is softly glowing with the comfort of pre-fall hues, barely discernible unless you’re paying close attention to the sky.
(Daily Writing 089)
Thoughts?