Hello September, Good Riddance August Edition
Thoughts as I contemplate summer's end, anniversaries, and loss.
Happy September Dear Ones,
September brings that subtle turn in the air, the hint of coming fall crispness in the mornings, even a bit of dew on the windshield, a sweater tugged on after dressing, discarded in the afternoon as sun climbs over hills and buildings, finally reaching the perfect spot, and faces tilt toward the welcome rays, basking with closed eyes spinning gold beneath lids. Brand new lunch boxes and book bags, County Fairs with petting pens, goats nibbling at outstretched hands filled with alfalfa pellets, pan flute music near the midway, and nearby farms with U-Pick apples and fresh-pressed apple juice thick with the glorious concentrated weight of summer. There are schedules and order after unstructured weeks, classes filled with friends old and yet-to-be-made, tryouts for volleyball and cheerleading, Friday night football games and “we’ve got spirit” until voices are hoarse, afterschool jobs funding new clothes, and homework, homework with so much reading, reading that sometimes swims toward sleep, and other times fascinates, unexpected, welcome, and novel.
I used to love August unequivocally, sitting in bleachers as the sun sunk behind the horizon at summer slow pitch games, pool swimming, body surfing, hot-tubbing, chlorine green hair, golden tans, slumber parties, camping, marshmallow roasting, cicada serenades after dates lingering long in the driveway, rafting the American River, paddling Tahoe’s Zephyr Cove, marrying the day after my mother-in-law’s 50th birthday, celebrating her and us with barbequed tri-tip, homemade coleslaw, and chocolate cake, playing Win, Lose, or Draw on the deck, enthusiastic performances of the latest Disney hit from our children.
And then in that first pandemic August, fire destroyed both my sister-in-law’s homes in the community where my husband and I had lived for 25 years. Debbie died four days after evacuating after a long bout with cancer; Coco, who lived with us for 5 months post-fire, passed the next August, dying mostly of a broken-heart. August is now tinged with ash and flame, death and grief, anniversaries we prefer not to celebrate, alongside the day 42 years ago we still recall with joy: sweating in antique lace and an ill-fitting late-arriving tuxedo under an arbor at UC Davis where we met in Advanced Principles of Argumentation, ducks quacking and portable piano pedal squeaking as the County Clerk officiated his first wedding, our hand-written vows recited before loved ones, so many now stardust.
Sometimes life feels stingy, mean, hoarding all that’s good, unwilling to loosen the grasp it keeps on loss. I felt that this spring as by himself, my husband inventoried all of Debbie’s possessions he could recall. A tedious process of scouring photos from before and after the devastation, of remembering time spent in every room with her, and entering it all on a spreadsheet for the insurance claim. He spent days, hours, and months, immersed in the minutia of her life and death. This accounting is required of every insured person who has lost a home to disaster, and it feels cruel to me, asking people in trauma to catalog their suffering.
To ease the burden of documenting and remembering, I’ve spent the past several weeks helping my husband on the second claim, inventorying the much larger house Coco shared with her partner, and mom. And as I watch the value of the many beautiful trinkets catalogued increase the magnitude of their loss, I have felt Coco, at her boisterous best just behind my shoulder, cheering into my ear “Go! Go! Go!” as if it’s all a game we’re playing, not to win, but for the sheer experience, the way she did 40 years ago when our entire full-lunged family enthusiastically chanted our way to second free and unexpected spin on Santa Cruz Boardwalk’s Giant Dipper roller-coaster. An epic moment we never forgot.
This afternoon I looked up from my inventorying to see a huge bouquet of mylar balloons floating in the water mid-bay, propelled by the incoming tide toward the estuary, so I pulled out my kayak and navigated the shallow water, scraping against oyster beds, paddling until I reached the balloons. My feet sunk deep into mud and oyster shells cut my legs as I untangled the strings from the shells, tied them to my boat, and paddled home, a flotilla of colorful stars bobbing behind me.
