WHO WILL WE BE IN SEPTEMBER?

I don’t know what it is about August, but every year around this time I start to get anxious. Who will I be in September?

September has always felt more consequential to me than January. And as a Jew, I have thousands of years of precedent for feeling this way. January asks you to make resolutions you already know you won’t keep. Occasionally, I make resolutions for the people around me too, which tends to go even worse. September on the other hand, still believes in you. It invites you to forget everything you know about your former self and become an entirely new person. By January you’ll obviously hate that bitch too, but still, it’s about the journey.

When I lived in LA, people didn’t go away for the summer. Where the fuck would we have even gone? We stayed, we hustled, we lamented about the heat, but we didn’t make drastic moves, that was what botox was for. As soon as June rolls around, New Yorkers flee the city like there’s a zombie apocalypse. They leave their apartments, schools, therapists, and entire friend groups only to return sometime after Labor Day, expecting to pick up right where they left off.

I can’t do that. The minute I fall out of a routine, I forget I ever had one. The me in June, drank whole milk foam in my macchiato. The me in August only does cold brew with almond milk. I need consistency, otherwise I can lose focus and accidentally start referring to myself as a jewelry designer.

When I was a little girl, my mother used to give me two dollars and fifty cents as a weekly allowance. Samantha, my sister, would use her money to buy a pack of Lee Press-On Nails. I’d spend mine on Japanese masks that I’d wear around the house, making Samantha address me as the foreign exchange student.

Back then, becoming someone else only cost me two dollars and fifty cents.

This time, it comes with a custody schedule.

It will also require me to water the plants, engage with my television and work the laundry machine. You think I’m being facetious. But I’m actually not even giving you the full story. The full story is too embarrassing.

Suffice to say, Jason was the domestic one in our relationship. He cooks, he cleans, he knows what an espadrille is. He was sandwiched between two sisters and once worked at a Gap/Baby Gap combo store. If I packed a suitcase, he would open it after me and refold or roll everything. Every time I taped a diaper to one of my kids, he was standing behind waiting to make it tighter.

When we first met, he was horrified to learn that when I got too stressed out by a dirty dish, I’d just throw it in the trash. But that was how I rolled.

Over the years, I’ve gotten better, or slightly better, or ten times worse. It’s hard to say. Another possibility is that I’ve just been living under the delusion that I’m better because there are more people around doing things for me.

(Blazer on top, board shorts on the bottom. The definition of motherfucking purgatory)

This September, a lot of those people won’t be there. I’m reentering Manhattan, unable to pick up where I left off, because here I left off no longer exists. I’m going to have to learn how to turn on the television, how to change the battery on the smoke detectors, and how my plants take their coffee.

Once I understand why I even own five remotes, I think I’ll finally finish Game of Thrones. We stopped watching when Sid was first born because, on the heels of his bris, it felt slightly insensitive to make him sit through that many episodes about castration.

At the time, that qualified as cruelty.

My definition has since expanded…

A divorce I’ve decided feels a bit like dying without mercy, without morphine.

When my brother was in a coma after suffering eleven strokes, my father and I made a pact that if either of us ever ended up in a similar state, the other wouldn’t let us suffer. I assured him I’d put a pillow over his head the minute he stopped looking cute in our selfies.

He promised the same, but his version of a cute picture of me and my version of a cute picture of me are DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT.

I have a backup murderer in case he gets cold feet.

Maybe when the weather starts to turn I’ll join a members club, maybe I’ll get into Kabbalah, or just start wearing that red string so people who are into Kabbalah want to talk to me.

Or maybe on the days my kids aren’t with me I’ll just lie on my bathroom floor sobbing uncontrollably, unable to pick myself up and get dressed because doing so would require me to know how to use the dryer.

I don’t want August to end.

(Jacket is new MIu Miu with tags and is avail www.secondcomingvintage.com )

In four weeks the kids go back to school and I walk into a life that is mine only half the time.

Whether I want it or not, September is coming.