From The Editor: Fall

The first time I heard the word “adulting” not so long ago, I immediately harkened back to my pre-teen years and assumed the definition of the term was simply behaving like a grown-up. And if that was indeed the meaning of the latest, vaguely annoying, quasi-millennial recasting of long-held, perfectly fine words, then, yes, I definitely associated adulting activities as things we do in the fall.

My (and Beyoncé’s) September 4 birthday always seemed to land on Labor Day weekend, the understood end of our endless summer. My summers growing up were filled with scant responsibilities, save playing competitive tennis for ten hours a day. But my tennis playing was still very much in the carefree-child realm. When my friends would gather to celebrate me every year, it would also mean we were probably out shopping earlier that day with our moms for our back-to-school supplies and clothes. So, yeah, my annual celebrations marked my special day as well as triggering the feeling of the impending death of frivolity. Deep thoughts for a child, I realize.

As an actual adult, my birthday also marked the start of a slew of massive events including the NFL and NCAA football seasons, New York Fashion Week (and Vogue’s colossal September issue), national elections, highly-anticipated TV shows, must-read books and award-seeking films (sorry kids, no superheroes allowed). Oh, lest we forget, pumpkin spice everything, fresh apples by the bushels, leaf peeping, Thanksgiving rituals and so on. In short, fall is when adulting really commences.

In my decades-long career as top editor of magazines, invariably our deadlines meant that while every single person I knew was absolutely enjoying their late summer in the Hamptons, Fire Island or frolicking in the Mediterranean on look-at-me yachts, my editorial team and I were forced to be in our Manhattan office the entirety of August on an unmovable deadline. I’m not sure if you’ve ever experienced the fresh hell of being the only person in your friend group in sweltering late-August NYC with the requisite 100 percent humidity hitting you just as smiling tourists from Arkansas approach and ask which way Times Square is. In that moment, I realize in the starkest of terms that no one promised me that living in the greatest city on the planet would always be fun. Oy.

But what my schedule did provide was the allowance to go on truly epic extended trips—Sydney (four times), Paris, London, Madrid, Montréal, Rome—in late September or October, well past the time US tourists had invaded those global destinations. By the time I got there, those same, chic but testy can’t-be-bothered-with-Americans locals were kinda-sorta missing us a bit more than they admitted and were always exceedingly welcoming to me on all of my memorable trips to those beautiful cities. Meanwhile, back in Gotham, my summer Hamptons/Fire Island/Mediterranean-loving friends were invariably in the midst of their own eye-ball deep, high-stakes work.

When we received final confirmation that Broadway icon Patti LuPone—who’s to musical theater what, say, Michael Jordan is to basketball—would be our cover story for this second anniversary edition of The Mountains, I started thinking about the term adulting once again. In the exclusive, LuPone tells me all about her two fall premieres that couldn’t be bigger or less alike in their reach: her triumphant return to the Great White Way in Jen Silverman’s comedy, The Roommate, co-starring her close friend Mia Farrow, as well as her role in Marvel’s Agatha All Along currently streaming on Disney+. That’s quite a bridge between performing eight-times-a-week on a Broadway stage while simultaneously co-starring on a big-time show in the Marvel Universe. But in both instances, Patti LuPone, unsurprisingly, was adulting seamlessly: Saving her most important work for the fall.

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this fall all of us—indeed, the entire country’s grown-ups—will be asked to participate in what is unquestionably the most important election of our lifetime. All I’ll ask is this: Please vote. Adulting, more than ever, is very much required. Tell a friend.