July, August
Now the days are hot and quiet. I get a little younger each morning. Some evenings I go to the park where the bookmobile used to come and I swing on a swing. There is a Little Free Library there. It looks like an old-fashioned schoolhouse. Someone took a lot of time. I’ve found many good books. A book on how to garden, circa 1970. A book on country drives to take and why you might. A book of the history of a little town nearby, the one with so many stone walls. I love to walk home carrying my newly found book. Once I discovered a children’s novel with a pink cover. I loved it for a week. It was about magic ponies as a cure for the loneliness invented for you by adults.
One day I have a new thought about myself. Everyone knows how rare it is to think something new. I sit up straighter and put down the book I am reading and hold the thought. It’s a thought about shyness. Now some things make more sense.
I set out every few hours. This time there is thunder. The first raindrops are tiny, tender, the way waking up can be tender. I hear the thunder, but I don’t rush home.
One evening I read as slowly as possible but still finish the translated novel. The last few pages break my heart, but not in a good way. The main character does not do what I would do, which is only information about me, finally, and isn’t that the point of novels? I’m the marrying type so it seems wrong not to when you love and are loved, as the characters do and are. There is no reason.
My girlhood remains a mystery to me, even with the new thought. I have never been good at plot, which is maybe why I am fine with walking the same quiet neighborhood streets, one time setting out left, the next time right. Maybe why, too, I don’t actually make progress, though I really like progress and even enjoy tidying up and putting the house to bed for the night.
Lately, something that used to happen is happening again. I have a lump in my throat. Long ago, a doctor concluded I was fine. Maybe there’s something going on in your life … he said like he was wondering but he really wasn’t. I made my surprise face. I can’t remember what I said then or if my then-husband was in the room. Experienced, I don’t need a doctor this time.
August and the cicadas start up. I don’t like them because they mean the end of summer. I don’t like them but I try anyway because I nearly always try anyway. Trying anyway is the lump in my throat. That’s Therapy 101.
Most people probably do try and it’s not quite right, never really is, and that’s something to think about, walking alone. So I do. And there are so many fine old trees in the neighborhood that I’ve begun putting my hand on them, once in a while, as I pass. I’m thinking my thought and the houses are full of people trying anyway and there are just so many fine oaks and maples and pines and the bark is interesting and the trees don’t seem to mind at all. They’ve been here a long, long time.
And that’s how July becomes August. All up and down this block and around a little curve to the next one and down a little hill and up and around again and again and again.
* * * * *
Maybe Tomorrow or the Day After
The man who stopped to let us cross, the dog and me, rolled down his window. He was in a truck. They’re always in a truck. He said, I’m a wounded veteran; I’ve got all the time in the world. That’s not what I was expecting. Let that be a lesson to me.
I keep thinking of him. Not what he said so much as how he said it. He seemed to be having a good day. And then, just like that, the dog and I became part of it. Have you ever noticed that you’ve become part of something?
Also, it was unseasonably warm. A little April just before Christmas. The sky was so sure. Blue blue.
All I said was okay. But it was a smiling kind of okay. And I think I nodded. It’s nice to give someone what they want. Probably we both thought that. It all got tangled up in a good way.
So, it never did snow. Not until New Year’s anyway. And of course I looked for him on other walks, but it was a one-time thing as some things are. And it only made me a little sad. A little happy and a little sad. Both at once, which is how I think I’ll look back on that whole year.