Dog Days

August.

Even knowing what “the dog days” means, I never hear the words without thinking of dusty, exhausted dogs, lying on gravel in the shade of a pealing building, tongues lolling, rib cages going like automated accordions.

Everything is exhausted in Autumn. The green becomes stretched and dry. Even the weeds have lost their verdure—leggy and full of sinewy thread, all pretence at leafiness cast aside for the sake of their ugly, pincushion fruit and fuzzy offspring. The horses will still eat the stuff, but they leave the stalks behind, half hidden in the grass like killing sticks in an old Asian war-zone.

Delarobia wreaths are usually fancied up with autumn pods of all kinds, romantic amidst evergreen and pear. But nothing that grows in my yard or pasture would make it into such a class act. I trust those wonderful pods grow through the summer in New England forests, where there are also acorns coming on and birch bark peeling. But really, I suspect they all just sort of magically appear after the first frost in late September. Because nothing good can come out of August (except Toni).

I remember walking down Sepulveda when I was a kid, headed for Sav-on. There was this department store on the way—very grown up, pricy stuff—and seeing in the window some sign about school starting soon. Could have been July—but I’m betting it was the beginning of August (the cruelest month), and I was absolutely horrified that anybody would even bring up school when we were still in the throes of precious summer. It always was my feeling that school should be sprung on children: “Guess what, honey? School starts tomorrow!” But no, first those weeks of buying new clothes and school supplies, and then the specter of the future, fouling the evenings of a fast-passing present.

But I have been long free of the tyranny of the classroom, and I have turned traitor to my young self, too often wishing the weeks of August gone—visions of pine cones and kicking through leaves dancing in my head. My heart is all for autumn. In August I don’t feel like doing anything. In the crisp evenings of late September, I feel like I can do everything. If I ever quilt again, it will be then.

Apple pies bubbling, the mountains gone to color—maybe a ride up the south fork trail to Big Springs on horses too fat with summer grass. I should not wish any of my life away, but truly, if I could, I would banish August and give its days to October, so’s not to waste them.

Maybe I wouldn’t feel this way if I had a boat. Maybe. But I do have this yard. The grass is thin under the trees, but the leaves above are still fat enough. There isn’t that juicy-spring fatness anymore, but a sort of peaceful resignation. Where we once measured our lives in firsts (first time one of the kids had a band cancert, first time date, first time graduation), we now measure in lasts (last Freshman at BYU, last autumn before the birds have flown). But that will cycle too – first grandkid to become fluent in English, first night alone in the house for good.

I have no conclusion for this. August has got me too sleepy. There should be some kind of end-of summer ritual, I stir myself to say: some big bonfire or trip to the beach or something. Maybe a watermelon seed spitting tournament. I’m going to have to work on that one. Maybe I will, in a minute.