Young dog Daphne was nosing around the base of a large old maple tree. She pressed her muzzle snugly to the ground and took something into her mouth. It crunched. She kept crunching and swallowing as fast as she could, as she watched me scurry over to her, impotently telling her to “drop it, drop it” (knowing full well she was not going to drop it; she was, after all, being young Daphne, doing young Daphne things).
I had missed seeing what it was that was now well inside her tummy. But then a thin, transparent wing floated down from the edge of her lips. A cicada wing. It could have been worse. But I scolded her a bit all the same. Perhaps for disobeying me. Perhaps for the act itself – eating a fellow living being, a harmless beauty. Or perhaps it was for taking away one of the singular signs of summer just as it is closing up for the season.
August is like that: rolling up awnings and putting away lawn chairs. It’s sunsets that come on too soon, and dawns that want to rush into day. Mourning Doves still coo in the liminal time before sunrise, but now they echo in the blue hours of twilight as well. Other birds are simply shifting their tunes from wild self declarations to subdued family conversations.
August is flower bulb leaves, drunk on golden summer sunshine, becoming a faded tipsy yellow themselves. Then, just for balance, tree leaves begin to flaunt their deepest ballgown green, and sunflower fields are in full fancy dress. August is apples and peaches jostling for space on roadside stands; it’s watermelons heavy in our arms and still warm from the field, winter squash overtaking their summer cousins, tomatoes in brown paper bags left on neighbors’ porch steps.
August is, as one writer put it, “the Sunday afternoon of summer.” Slower in pace and suggestive of naps. More muted in color as well as sound. Even the cicadas are yawning and stretching and digging their way back home for a long sleep (ideally far from dog noses and other bothers).
This year, especially, August seems like a kind of break room – holding a seat for us between months that slog through screaming hot, wet weather, and the heads-down free-fall rush of industry and focus of autumn. It’s a time of respite “after” … as well as a place of rest “before.”
It seems like no small coincidence that the famous “Perseids Meteor Showers” occur in August. (This year, they peak about the time you will be reading this column.) This starry, starry night event happens when the earth passes through a stream of celestial debris – the detritus of comets and castoff star dust. Just as we seem to be passing through so much debris and detritus of human foibles and mindless meddling, nature turns around and gives us this. All we have to do is lie on our backs in the dark before dawn and look up into the heavens. And there it will be.
I suspect I will be there, too – out in my driveway, on my back on a rug, young dog Daphne tucked under one arm, old cat Tuppence prowling on tiptoe nearby, saying goodbye to summer and thanking God for August, with its blessings and balance: falling stars, fading gardens, sleepy cicadas, unruly dogs, and all.