The August Effect
Every August, no fail, the vacations and ice cream cones and BBQs become punctuated with a palpable and growing sense of angst. My G.O.A.T. singer/songwriter James Taylor said it best in his song, “September Grass”: ...you know, I can see summertime slipping on away. His song is literally about September, when one might argue summer actually is, empirically, slipping away. So why do we torture ourselves in August, the absolute pinnacle of summer itself, with nostalgia, already, for its passing? August for me has always been the fullest expression of the season; the climate has found a way to settle in with itself, and be warm and rich with life and promise without the intensity and grit of July.
The fact is, we humans are just terrible at appreciating the spoils of right now. We’ve absolutely conquered looking ahead with urgency (hello, Halloween paraphernalia already in stores) and looking back with longing. But the summer we waited all year for? We’re already mourning its demise while living within it.
I’m guilty as charged. I’ve whiled away the summer myself, particularly in pivotal years like the ones in which I was looking ahead to moves or fertility treatments or the first day of Kindergarten, or just too young to comprehend how few summers we all have, ever. But now—now the universe has conspired to make me pay attention. You find out your child has a life-limiting disorder, and suddenly life is right here, right now. These are the days. Will there be more? Possibly, probably. I hope that is true, with my whole heart. I absolutely do believe that science will make it so (which is why you do not find me, right this minute, in a fetal position over there in a corner). Yet I know it is also possible that Charlie’s life could be contained to certain, more-defined days ensconced in a sealed bottle of a life—and so, I will do everything to make sure it is a life well-lived.
I find it ironic in the most jarring way that children are the most adept at living in the moment—even the children whose moments might be delineated by their genetic calculus. It’s a gift we’re given immediately, one that most of us are forced by the unfolding of modern life and circumstance to cast aside at some point along the way. For me, the newer gift of a child with needs is restoring my connection with that original gift. I will fight for Charlie like an entrenched warrior—always. But I have absorbed in this past year that the battle simply cannot be permitted to supersede the one we all fight every day: the push-pull between this moment and all that’s come before, everything (whatever it is) ahead. It is a tension that I think we all work with and against, and that some passages of life may ease, both by default and by necessity.
Don’t get me wrong; I am terrified about what is ahead. Charlie is becoming heavier; carrying him to reach what we need to, or want to, do is becoming more and more difficult. It’s more tempting to leave him behind here and there, and the guilt that comes with that is considerable. But still, I’ve felt a palpable shift this summer, my own settling in on this season of our life as a family. And what I’ve taken away is: Don’t let August slip by without taking good notice.
I’ll leave it here with lines from the one and only Sharon Olds, which have rendered comfort since my bestie and I put them on our holiday cards in the bleak aftermath of 9/11:
I am doing something I learned early to do, I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have–as if it were our duty to
find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.