At every age, I’ve tried to squeeze more and more out of Augusts that somehow seem to pass in a few flashes rather than languid weeks.
At every age, I’ve tried to squeeze more and more out of Augusts that somehow seem to pass in a few flashes rather than languid weeks.
W hy can’t we steal a few more days from February and add them to August? It’s just one of twelve months, but I would bet half of my most treasured sense memories belong to it. The smell of vanilla ice cream and waffle cones at Round Top in Damariscotta, my uncle’s authoritative voice ringing through the Maine accents, asking for black raspberry. The sound of Damariscotta Lake lapping against our little fishing boat, the gleam of a perch sailing from our hands, and making its dive back into the dark waters. My uncle giving it a score “from the East German judge.” The smell of conditioned leather at the factory seconds store in Skowhegan, Maine, where I’d pick up fresh sneakers for the next school year.
Long days spent just reading, and reading and reading. Learning I could finish a Stephen King book in a day. A big history book in two. Long walks in the muggy night with my dog, sometimes covering four or five miles, stretching to midnight, coming up with inspired phrases to deploy on my first big crush. The feeling of exhilaration as I let a teenage love letter go into the mailbox, trying and largely succeeding to make a young girl become as possessed by the thought of me as I was by her.
As I got older, August was the trips to Southern New Jersey, and my annual electric scooter runs up and down the barrier islands. Avalon, the town for rich people, then a bridge. Then the town for working-class Eagles fans who made good. Another bridge. The vibration starting to numb my hands, and the cool wind easing my sunburns. The town for campers and RVs. Another bridge. The silence of the dry town, which moves all the action to the boardwalk. Another bridge, the familiar names from Monopoly. The seedy strip clubs. My bike slightly polluting the stillness on the way back. Finally, I pull into Wawa and get something with fat and salt, not caring if it gives me nightmares later.
At every age, I’ve tried to squeeze more and more out of Augusts that somehow seem to pass in a few flashes rather than languid weeks.
The normal work hours are returning to me. School and homework for my children. And all the extracurriculars. We need this routine, or so much less would get done. But I still feel bad for my children. The years still pass slowly for them. And they know that their parents secretly resent the homework they get, the hour or two of poison gas that school sprays into evenings.
Our chief consolation, besides religion, is September baseball. The extension and exaltation of summer’s game into autumn. In September we sometimes dream of future Augusts. I want to spend one in Donegal, playing courses like Narin & Portnoo and Ballyliffin, and chase my children up the dunes of the Five Finger Strand beach. I want to spend one hiking in the Mountain Northwest, and another enjoying the desert around Sedona, avoiding the voodoo religion in the gift shops. But this September we might just book the same old thing in New Jersey.
I’ve learned from the liturgy of my church that the annual celebration of a thing, and the rote nature of that celebration, gradually makes it into a portal to the divine. The coffee from the same old place, the familiarly tolerable hangover from Fireball that went with late-night Trivial Pursuit, telling the old self-deprecating stories over again until they are as compact and gleaming as a diamond found on the evening beach. That’s my August, and I’m already waiting for the next one.