Making August Move

August. It’s an odd place for a new start. The air is thick with old heat. Gardens are tired, people are tired, dogs are tired. There’s heat everywhere and sweat. Beads of sweat almost always. But it’s August, so little tiny fingers and hands wave goodbye and blow kisses and load buses and classrooms. Awkwardly tall and embarrassingly sort teenagers lumber into high schools to begin or continue or end their education --hopeful or sad or dismayed. Long hair, lovely outfits, and over confidence tumble out of loaded cars and meet their future square on at campuses far and wide.

There are practices again, sign-ups, schedules, classes, rehersals, games, plays, performances. It all starts up in the heat, in the scorching sun.

There are lotteries to get in and money shelled out for uniforms and fees and tuitions and books.

 August arrives  -- earlier alarm clocks, heavier traffic, longer days and sleepless nights.  We are giddy with excitement over knowing smiles across the classroom, a coaches’ invitation to a team, a placement in a class, a new apartment, a new friend. 

Perhaps it’s the way we survive a motionless month – make it move.

We returned to a school day at home. It seemed lonely and tiresome, strange and off balance. But we found a rhythm and a purpose in what we wanted to study and write and create. We’ve found poetry and art, music and numbers, stories and sayings, bacteria, frogs, tadpoles, mushrooms, hummingbirds, house geckos, and ripe fruit. We’ve planted more seeds and watched them sprout. We’ve started to create what becomes a day filled with bundles of opportunity. We can make jelly and then swim before we read about Indians, or the Civil War. I like that I don’t have to fill out forms or paper work or pack a lunch. Instead I’m really learning too.

I’ve already learned so much and I can’t wait for the next day to read the next chapter. We learn together and hopefully create and solve and find solutions to problems.

We write down new words that didn’t make sense and then they become real and roll off our tongues. Congeal, civilization, avenge, and duplicate.

 

We learn songs and poems and memory. We have discussions about why we should “love our enemies, do good, and lend a helping hand expecting nothing in return.”

August stood so still and then, just like that, we’ve made it to September.