This is the time of the year it happens: the evening breeze grows cooler, the sunlight takes on a more golden hue, and spouses around the valley disappear.  For nearly every winemaker, cellar hand, and vineyard manager sampling fruit at daybreak, there is somebody left behind.  We have a name for this solitary castaway: the harvest widow.

The first time I heard the term, it was tossed alongside a bocce ball in St. Helena's public bocce courts.  My teammate laughed as she balanced a glass of sauvignon blanc in one hand and her bocce ball in the other, "Well, we girls are harvest widows no, so..."

Harvest widowhood was a novelty in those days.  None of us were married, and being a widow implied that you were probably one of the Pretty Ones who worked regular hours schmoozing tourists in a tasting room.  Maybe it meant a few more girls' nights out, more sparkling wine and less Pabst.

The title didn't apply to me, exactly, since I worked harvest myself then and for five years afterward.  During that time, harvest was a common language for my (eventual) husband and me- one of undone laundry, hearty breakfasts, and endless work weeks.  It was intense.  Necessary.  Invigorating.

Now, however, I look back at how flippantly my friends referred to their widow status.  And I think... Really?

Those long-ago girlfriends at bocce weren't married to someone who they wouldn't see for two months.  They weren't left to run a household, ferry children, plan meals, work their own full-time job, and keep the front yard alive, alone.  And the laundry?   What will ferment in a barrel, will ferment in flannel.  Best get to it, missus.

This morning, my husband brought in his first cabernet of the year.  We are not in the thick of things yet, but it's only a matter of time.  I can tell by the ever-so-slightly longer shadows cast in the sunlight, and by the morning chill when my kids pitter-pat out of their bedrooms.  It's September, and widowhood isn't just a novelty.  It is imminent.