August is a month of long,
hot days when the cats stretch out lazily in the sun. Raspberries ripen
seemingly by the hour, Saskatoon berries hang heavy and black on the bushes,
and the day bleeds into balmy evenings. How idyllic is that?
It is a month that
means many things to different people. It might be baseball played on community
diamonds, boating on lakes, soaking up the sun on the dock or a beach, or leaning
on a farm gate inhaling the scent of freshly mown hay.
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| Image courtesy Claire E Henderson |
My most memorable August was the summer of 1960, the month between leaving school and starting work. The August when I told my mother I would enjoy four weeks of doing exactly what I wanted to do before beginning job-hunting the first week in September. I hung out with friends in the daytime, feeding jukeboxes in coffee shops to hear ‘Cathy’s Clown’ by the Everly Brothers or ‘Shakin’ All Over’ with Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. We crowded into jazz clubs in the evenings to listen to Acker Bilk or Chris Barber.
According to Sue Monk
Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees, “The month of August had turned into a
griddle where the days just lay there and sizzled.” How vivid a description is
that? It makes me wish I had written it. Hers is not the only quote from
literature about August. Here are some more:
“Leaving any bookstore
is hard, especially on a day in August, when the street outside burns and
glares, and the books inside are cool and crisp to the touch.” – Jane Smiley,
author of One Thousand Acres.
But my favourite August
quote is this from Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. “The first week of
August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the
highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that
come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to
the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot.”
And yes, this year, it
has been and still is hot. We open all the windows at night to let in the cool
air, close them in the morning, and pull the blinds to keep the heat out. Fans
keep the temperature bearable. All too soon, August will become September, and
the fall will be upon us. Oh, and that job hunt my mother was so insistent about?
In the first week of September 1960, I had seven job interviews and five offers
and finally entered the workforce as a hospital records manager.
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