Chilling Effect of September Send-Offs

Not that I need reminders that time marches on (the house is fully stocked with mirrors), but here comes September to drive the point home. T. S. Eliot called April the cruelest month, but had anyone thought to press him about September, he no doubt would have called it the most wistful.

There’s no mystery to it, especially to those of us who grew up outside the confines of California, where September may seem pretty much like August, not to mention January or May.

For us, September meant it was time to get a move on. The peal of the first school bell in early September was as much symbolic as real. Whether you were a first-grader or a freshman, the siren sound from the schoolhouse or campus summoned you to the new uncertain adventure that lay ahead. Instinctively, you knew you would be different nine months down the road.

That sensation, so real in the Midwest where I grew up, feels less pronounced here in California where I’ve spent the last 16 summers.

I confess to missing that feeling, even though I’ve made the typical Californian’s bargain of accepting 70-degree temperatures in December in exchange for the changing of the seasons.

But as dulled as the ol’ nostalgia membranes may have been in recent years, they’re rustling again, if only vicariously.

Last week, a beloved cousin from my Nebraska boyhood spent a week in Orange County with his wife and two sons, both in their 20s. The visit was to help elder son Scott, 29 and a Ph.D., set up housekeeping as he begins his full-time teaching career at Cal State Fullerton. He needed to buy a car, buy a bed, get some furniture, learn his way around campus, meet his colleagues, start living his new life in a new town.

This weekend, a longtime friend is here from New Jersey with another young man in tow--his 18-year-old son, Dan, who will enroll at CalArts in Valencia. Dan has designs on becoming a drummer in a jazz ensemble. His father confesses to being a wreck, knowing that at the end of the 3,000-mile drive to California, he’ll be saying goodbye to a little boy who’s not so little anymore.

Is there a manual somewhere that tells parents how to handle these moments?

My Nebraska cousin and his wife are semi-experts, having already sent Scott and his brother off in past Septembers. And sure, Scott probably could have survived his arrival in Orange County without his parents’ presence. But I find it kind of touching that they came, anyway, and that he’s already phoned them a number of times back in Nebraska. During the week they were here, no one needed to say aloud that we grasped the momentousness of Scott surveying the landscape on the eve of his teaching career.

As for my Jersey pal, well, this will be virgin territory. Dan is the older of my friend’s two children; sending the first-born off to college won’t be easy. I’m already telling myself not to bring out the picture I have of Dan as an infant in his mother’s arms. But I will spend our entire time together telling my friend what a fabulous town Valencia is.

History tells us that young and not-so-young alike survive these September passages. My best evidence comes from reeling in the memories from 35 years to an emotionally fragile 17-year-old college freshman who missed his mommy and daddy but somehow found his dorm room at Nebraska U. and made it to class all by himself. I say this with certainty: If that kid could make it, anybody can.

If memory serves, so did his parents.

So will it be for my cousin’s son and my friend’s son.

The young bucks’ task now is to enjoy themselves and celebrate their youth in the perpetual summertime that is California.

It is only we elders who will dwell on the coming autumn and wonder whether, California or not, things seem a little chillier already.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821; by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626; or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.