Try to Remember a Time in September…

…when you thought December would never come.  If that makes no sense to you, then you need to listen to this, the opening song from the musical The Fantasticks, which was once the longest running musical on Broadway.

It’s 1968 and H and I have just married.  We go almost straight from our wedding to Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, a resort where we will be part of the first (and I believe last!) summer stock company.  H. was the actor, their leading man with the appropriately sexy English accent, and I was the costume designer/wardrobe mistress.  The Fantasticks was the first play we did.  It did not require a leading man with a sexy English accent, so H. played one of the fathers and got to sing about planting carrots.  I showed my vast understanding of costuming by putting the girl I most disliked into the color I most disliked, gold, which ensured that she was a beacon of light on the stage among the others dressed in my favored earth tone shades.  The play and its music were just a backdrop to that first summer of my marriage.  When I heard “Try to remember a time in September when you were young…”–hell, I was young and never expected to be anything but.

Ha!

Fast forward forty some years, and for some reason the song, which was burnt into my brain that summer, keeps coming back to me.  

I’ve got a split screen going in my mind: me then and me now, hearing the same song, but being moved by different parts of it. Then I was focused on the “love is an ember about to billow.” But it wasn’t or it didn’t or it died out…or maybe it’s still smoldering somewhere. Today I hear the last verse, the “Deep in December” verse:

“…it’s nice to remember, although you know the snow will follow. Deep in December it’s nice to remember without a hurt, the heart is hollow. Deep in December it’s nice to remember the fire of September that made us mellow. Deep in December our hearts should remember, And follow”

I don’t know that I’m deep in December yet–what would that look like anyway?–but I am deep in remembering.

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  • Shani Ferguson

    That is quite beautiful. Sad, but beautiful.

  • joanna jenkins

    “The Fantasticks” was the very first live musical I ever saw in NYC– Around 1968-ish. I didn’t actually know what they were singing about back then but I still remember the song…. and love it. Thanks for the reminder. jj

  • http://www.thebabyboomerweb.com David Goldman

    Hi, Just came across your blog. It looks good. You really had me hooked when you mentioned Seven Springs. I remember going there a couple of times as a teenager, even though I hated to ski. You are talking about my “backyard.” Grew up just a couple of hours away. Thanks for the memories. I will keep following your blog.

  • King Midget

    My connection to this song is from a piano music book that we had when I was a child. Great Songs of the Sixties. I’m certain this book was in it and it was one of the songs I played from that book. I learned to play the piano because my sisters took lessons and they taught me how to play. That song book was my favoriate book to play from … as well as christmas carols from other books Anyway, Jane, whether it’s ultimatel good or bad, this is a wonderful memory of the past. Just a great way of drawing a connection over the span of a lifetime. Thanks for sharing.

  • Jane

    Hmmm. I didn’t mean it to be sad. That split screen happens to me a lot of times when I’m faced with a ‘now and then’ situation. Like a grown woman who I used to hold as a baby….

  • Jane

    So, David, where’d you grow up? Seven Springs was in my backyard too. Who do we know in common? Where’d you go to high school?

  • Jane

    King Midget,

    The piano book that I played from all the time was the music from the movie about Hans Christian Anderson. I was particularly fond of “Thumbalina” and “Inchworm”, but the one that always made me cry was “Anywhere I Wander.”

  • Karen

    In September of 1968, my girlfriend and I packed up her 1966 mustang with worldly belongings and left Minnesota to go to California. The reason? 2 boys that eventually became our husbands!

  • Jane

    And? And? Karen, don’t just leave us hanging!

  • Anonymous

    an old high school chum from Pittsburgh was a life guard at Seven Springs the summer following our graduation. I made the hour jaunt frequently that summer. It was my first exposure to true rural life, and unbeknownst to me was a forerunner of things to come since my current digs are certainly rural.

  • Jane

    grafton6019,
    I’m trying to remember the pool at Seven Springs, but I can’t envision it. Maybe we, the acting company, weren’t allowed in it, since we were considered employees. What I do remember is a pond across from the theatre where H. spent a fair amount of time shooting frogs with a Daisy BB rifle–and then the director skinned and ate the legs.

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