It’s mid-August and the stores are blatantly advertising school supplies and autumn clothing, not to mention Halloween decorations ---- this, in spite of the humidity and 80-90 degree temperatures.  August is still summer!!--- and days continue to be good for picnics, sun tans, and nights fine for star-gazing.  Hal Borland* describes August well……….”Dog Days ….Dragon flies and Damsel flies follow the boat when I go out on the river……little spotted turtles sun themselves on old logs and slip into the water when I come too close…………..barn swallows begin to leave and so do the chimney swifts……golden rod comes into bloom everywhere……milkweeds have formed their pods, still green and tightly closed………..wild blackberries ripen.” I remember, as a child, trudging down the lane, to our back pasture, where blackberries grew in the hedgerow.  They were harvested with considerable effort, while garnering mosquito bites, scratches from the impressive thorns and purple fingers and mouths.  Inside that hedge row, was a wild, unexplored and slightly enchanted world of vegetation, birds and bugs, ripe for the exploring.

Our granddaughters will, in the fall, be exploring a different uncharted territory.  One will be entering public school classes for the first time in many years, after having been home-schooled.  And the other will begin her college/further education years.  I’ve been thinking back to my move from home to college.  My freshman roommate visited me this summer, and as she looked at some photos from our year together, she said: “We were so young!”  We definitely were --- though I’m sure we felt quite adult and competent.  I had some really good experiences that first and only year at Plattsburg (including the roommate).  There were some fine teachers and classes.   Once or twice, we biked out into the country; my first experience with a bike that had gears. Despite the frigid winter winds, we blithely skated on Lake Champlain --- having no clue about dangerous things like air pockets in the ice.  I think our guardian angels might have been overworked that year!  Probably needed to work in shifts!    We played tennis, sighed over a tall and good-looking baritone, and – somehow --managed to glean considerable growth in the process of being on our own for the first time.     

Growing up always includes some angst about fitting in.   How long was it before I felt confident enough to be me --- with everyone?  Honesty forces me to say that the process went on into adult-hood learning experiences.   If only I’d subscribed earlier to the adage often attributed to Dr. Seuss:**  “Be yourself!  Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”  It takes a few years of living to trust the truth in that.  We are all born with gifts unique to each of us, and we need to share that which is ours alone to share --- without fear and without worrying about who will like us and who won’t.  Just as there will always be someone to criticize, there will always be someone to appreciate the persons we are.  Our own uniqueness is how we give back to a world that needs what we have.  And those who criticize should really look more deeply at themselves ---- and mind their own business.

I am about to experience a personal “turning of the year;” into a new decade.  One up-side to aging is finding I’m able to be more objective about things that might have sent me into a tizzy earlier. My current life-span is just too short to waste meaningless anxiety on people and events about which I can do nothing.  If I’m going to be anxious, it will be for something that I consider important --- like whether Friendly’s will continue making butter crunch ice cream even though they are closing restaurants, or whether one of our sons is again on busy super-highways, driving in the wee, small hours.  Actually, I can’t do anything about those either, but having an excellent imagination, I am capable of creating amazing scenarios for worrying.  I’m trying to learn to divert my thought processes when this happens, but that is a continuing life-lesson in trust.

Birthdays are a time for thinking; about looking back to see how the year has been, and looking forward with gladness to the unexplored territory that is the year ahead.  Some people get grumpy about birthdays after a certain age, but I feel that celebrating them is good for the psyche.  Having fun times and remaining alert to the world around is a key to enjoying life --- and birthdays.  I will admit that it has been a bit startling to think of myself as “senior” or “elderly.”  My body agrees that I certainly am, but most days, my mind feels no special age.    Regardless of increasing lines and wrinkles, I’m sure that I’ll find this year just as full of challenges, fun, sadness and delight as the last year, when I was only 79.

It is Spencer Picnic week, a community festival of long-standing tradition of 111 years.  It is a celebration of community; a way to maintain the ties that bind.  There’s good food, carnival rides, a “Miss Spencer Picnic” and a talent show.  There is the parade on Saturday and excellent fireworks.  Kerm and I have always chosen to live in small communities for this very kind of connection, and we find small town positives are far more outstanding than the negatives.  One’s experiences and views, wherever one lives, can be as wide as reading and travel make them.  We have found the Spencer-Van Etten area a good place to live.  When someone is in need people step in as soon as they know.  There are fund-raisers for local children who are in the hospital, fun-raisers for the Ukraine, people who will help new-comers find plumbers, electricians, and play groups for their kiddies.  When one’s large, fawn-colored dog runs away during hunting season, the hunters are careful not to shoot it.  We have personally experienced neighborly kindnesses --- often. I have noticed that people can be adversarial in theory but wonderful in reality.  If the discussion is about politics or local issues --- people can disagree vociferously.  Voices are raised and hostility creeps in.  But if a neighbor needs help, that same person who yelled at the last town meeting will be right there with a casserole and comfort. Therein lies hope for the world.

For my childhood years, he road on which my home dairy farm stood was a dirt road --- rural!   While growing up, I’d visit up and down that road; there was the elderly couple who I adopted as surrogate grandparents and where I played with a beautiful, old porcelain doll and washed my hands in a dry sink.   There were neighbors who had a TV, which we did not.  They also had a pool table and a slot machine.  So, after school, I watched the Mickey Mouse Club, learned to keep the white ball out of the billiard pockets and tried to avoid putting the slot machine into TILT mode.  I learned to ride on a neighbor’s horse.  Another neighbor came to help us with haying.  So, while we were mostly autonomous, we also relied on each other to be in community.

Hal Borland* (quoted above) also wrote about community.  He lived on a dirt road, had good neighbors, and observed wild life very similar to that around here.  Of course, when he wrote, 40 years ago, none of us had bears, fishers or coyotes all of which now make themselves very much at home in our back yards.  This summer the creatures that share our outdoor spaces are both annoying and amusing.  As I sat here typing, I noticed the tall weeds waving back and forth at the end of a garden bed (yes – I do have weeds; LOTS of them!) --- but there was no wind.  A slanted brown head poked out --- a woodchuck was gobbling down the lambs’ quarters that had grown up there.  I probably should have let him eat the weeds, but I was so startled to have him dining eight feet away, right in my garden bed, that I spoke rather firmly ---and loudly.  He took off for the wood shed.  Something (Bear? Raccoons? Possums? Skunks?) have also drained the water bowls every night during the dry weather.   I’m thinking we should have a “creature patio” where each one has his/her own little table and cup ala Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson,***a book much loved by our boys when they were small and by me as well.

Now that we are in August, it is time to store up good things; to preserve summer, whether it is blackberries, herbs or memories.  We’ll be canning tomatoes and probably freezing some peaches.  I’ve already dried mullein – in case of respiratory problems.  I’ll also be drying tansy to discourage pantry moths and lemon balm simply to smell wonderful.  And I’m trying to store up mental photos and feelings to pull out when the outside weather is less enjoyable.   There is something in the mellow air of mid-August, alerting us that summer though it is, we are subtly moving toward fall.  So, we need to luxuriate in balmy weather now.  “Buttercup nodded and said goodbye, clover and daisy went off together, but the fragrant water lilies lie yet moored in the golden August weather…….”. ****

Carol may be reached at: carol42wilde@htva.net.

*Hal Borland ---- American journalist, writer, naturalist.  1900-1978

**Dr. Seuss --- Pen name for Theodore Seuss Geisel, an American writer of mostly children’s books well-known for their unique rhyming style of prose.  His perceptions of humanity did change over the years and he was a strong proponent of good ecological practices and caring for even the smallest person.  1904-1991.

***Robert Lawson --- American writer and illustrator of children’s books.  1892-1957.

****Celia Thaxter --- this was the first stanza of her poem, “August”.  She is an American writer and poet who lived in New England and on the islands off the coast of Maine.  1835-1894.