Oh, September Girl.

I can't remember what I thought the first time I heard "September Girl." Isn't it funny how that happens? Some of the pivotal songs that you carry around with you over the years are so significant that you can remember exactly where you were and what you were doing the first time you heard them. "Carry On Wayward Son" is that way for me, and so is "Under Pressure." But for all of the meaning that "September Girl" has to me, I cannot remember where I was or what I was doing the first time I heard it.

I guess it's likely that it was in June of 2002 that I first heard it, the first time I saw Jupiter Sunrise at a festival in Altamont (New York). I had gone with a friend because he was into Dashboard Confessional and I had a thing for him. Jon Parker isn't in my life anymore, but if it weren't for his affinity for Dashboard, I may never have been exposed to Jupiter Sunrise.

Somehow or another the band became a part of my life in the months and years to follow. My first few years of college, my core and only group of friends revolved around the band. Greg and Dave, who I'd gone to high school with, fell in love with the band along with me. But if it weren't for the band, I never would have met Val or Kristine (still two of my best friends in the world), Scott (my first love), Mimi, Dan, Steve, Paddy, and, of course, the four members of the band -- Mark, Ben, Aaron, and Chris.

My life -- all our lives -- centered around them for years. They were originally from our area so although they toured the entire country they always stayed in our neck of the woods for more than a few days. And we followed them around wherever they went that was driving distance. We got to be friends with the band and immersed ourselves completely in everything about them.

The song "September Girl" became my favorite song. Maybe it was just because my birthday is in September that I felt like I could relate to it. But its somewhat esoteric lyrics struck a chord with me for some reason and that has never been more real until today.

Although I can't remember the first time I heard it, I can remember the most important. When I turned eighteen (can this memory really be ten years old already?) I walked down the driveway with Greg, Dave, and Andy to my parents' garage, unsuspecting of any pending surprise birthday party. As I walked down the driveway, the garage door opened. Drums and guitar kicked up, and there was Jupiter Sunrise, playing "September Girl" in my parents' garage.

Over the years it hits me at random points and certain words or phrases stand out to me. Sometimes I tried to force it to apply to my situation even when it didn't; other times the words meant something entirely different than what they'd meant to me the last time I'd sung it. The song became an essential thread in the fabric of my life, and it's always been there.

This year it's like I finally get it. Ten years ago when I first started liking the band, I wondered what the song would feel like when I turned twenty-eight. The second line of the song is "...already twenty-eight, still haven't saved the world..." As the years went on, I felt like I was getting closer and closer to the point where the song's meaning for my life would come to fruition. Now it has, and I completely missed it on my birthday.

I was a little distracted, but the reasons for the distractions are exactly why the song makes so much more sense now.

September in Skagway is a transitional month. It's the last month of the season. The last cruise ship day was yesterday, and all the summer people have been gradually making their way out of town. There was a mass exodus today as seasonals piled onto boats, planes, cars and trucks to head back to the real world. Town is about to get a lot quieter, a lot smaller, a lot slower, a lot more peaceful. This September has been more transitional than most-- four days in, a life came to a sudden stop, and our real world in Skagway will never be the same. This September's transitions included police reports and a funeral alongside the usual end-of-season chaos.

It's comforting sometimes in those trials and times of absolute change when nothing is recognizeable in your life anymore to reconnect with an old friend. Sometimes the old friend is an actual person; sometimes it's a book, work of art, hiking trail, or movie; and sometimes it's a song. In my case, recalling "September Girl" was strangely soothing and terrifying at the same time. The realization that I am, at last, 28 years old and able to fully realize a meaning of the song that feels like it was written just for me, makes everything hanging on my shoulders easier to bear while at the same time further engraining it all into my head.

All of the emotions that I've felt over the last twenty-three days of September -- guilt, anger, sadness, loss, grief, fear, pain, love, rage -- are, in one way or another, encompassed in the lyrics that I have always come back to over the years. The song has always made sense to me but now, with all that's been going on, with life and death suddenly made more painfully separate and defined, and with change suddenly being a much bigger word than one syllable, it's absolutely perfect.

Oh, September girl, I am so scared today
Already 28, still haven't saved the world
Woke up this morning to nothing I recognized
Everything changed and I never saw it coming
Now there are five billion disappointed souls
Scraping around in my disappointed mind
And for the first time in my life I am afraid of change because
Everything's changing without me
Oh, September girl, I am so scared for you
You finally decided to live on without me
Now I am forced to just swallow this heart
And for you to become the girl you already are
Now there are five billion disappointed souls
That will just have to wait 'cause I only dream for you
And for the first time in my life I am afraid of change because
Everything's changing without me
Maybe it's time for me to do the thing that I'm meant to do
'Cause you're getting older and I'm getting older
And even us good people die
The gifted never stop seeing the world for the first time
The good ones grow older, the poor ones grow older,
The great ones are never forgotten.

By some beautiful coincidence, the man who wrote the song is online at the same time as me while I write this blog. It makes me wonder... I've always known as a songwriter that my own interpretation of a song and its meaning to me personally may be completely different from someone else's. That's part of the joy of writing songs, I guess -- the knowledge that it may touch someone in a way that you never would have expected. I can only hope that someday, somewhere, something I create will have some kind of meaning to someone else, even if that meaning is entirely different than the meaning I personally ascribed to it.