Underside of August
Right before a rainstorm hits, leaves on the local trees turn over and show their underside (we used to say they ‘turned inside-out’) and you know it’s about to pour. Maybe that’s just a northeast-Ohio-thing, which I find is true about a lot of my longheld practices. If you grew up watching storms brew over Lake Erie, moving from west to east, with a perfect view of what a weather front looks like, you saw leaves turn inside out, and then you moved for cover. Just last month on vacation, this happened, and our new family member from the PNW had never a.) heard a tornado siren or b.) seen the leaf-thing. She was a little alarmed that the sirens went off and I was all, ‘let’s go to the lake and watch!’, and she was all ‘maybe go in a basement?…’. Ohio can make you weird about rainstorms.
It turns out leaves flipping is mostly with maples and poplars, and it happens because of changes in wind and humidity. Leaves grow in accordance to the wind, and when the wind shifts (like, say, right before a rainstorm moves from over-the-lake to coming-ashore), the leaves twist to follow that wind. Leaves feel humidity, and when the barometer drops and atmospheric pressure dips (like, say, as a storm brews more intensely) the leaves go limp and it makes them more prone to show their underside in the changing wind. So, science. Anyhow, when the leaves flip, get ready.
For those of us working in Education, mid-August is the calm-before-the-storm. We can see the calendar filling up, with department gatherings, mandatory meetings, orientations (more than one), classroom readiness, welcome-back events — all before the first bell rings for the new school year. We see it, we know it, we feel it in the air, but we are still sleeping without an alarm, sipping coffee on the back deck, having long lunches, and doing mundane things that are hard to wrangle during the school year (oil changes, furnace cleaning, dental appointments, doing something with all the tomatoes that just keep coming in…). We are summering. But we are also simmering, with the anticipation the leaves are about to turn (not just a metaphor) and we are about to be in it.
“Before school starts…” is an actual time. As in, ‘let’s get together before school starts’, ‘can you get me in before school starts?’, ‘I’m open before school starts’… and our non-educator friends shake their heads and want a specific date. And so our August is both slow and warp-speed, both calm and chaotic. It is true you can hold both polarities in your body, and your calendar, at the same time — there is nothing mutually exclusive about August; it is the actual beginning and the end all at once.
Added in the mix, for me, was a unscripted health scare (tbh, all health scares are unscripted) that came out of nowhere. All of a sudden my summer included doctors and referrals and biopsies and surgery and follow-ups and lots of waiting for results. My timeline stayed steady, as in ‘get it done before school starts’, ‘get me in to see that doc before school starts’, and good-god-this-better-heal-before-school-starts. I am fine — save for sporting a savage new scar — many thanks to medical professionals who slid me in to tiny openings in schedules to get it all taken care of. It gives me pause to think how complicated this would have been during the school year, so on the list of what I’m grateful for, in addition to my relentless rally squad, is August unfolding sort-of-slowly, and giving me time and space and a little grace. And also a feeling that there was a storm, and it didn’t come ashore.
Alongside the simmering of late August, over here it’s wedding season. Big wedding day coming in full-tilt in early September. Right now, all the major planning is done, invites are out, RSVPs are back, we are deep in the tiny details: tasting foods and wines, talking about shoes and pet-sitters, figuring out airport pickups. We are in the calm, sprinkled with chaos; in the moments, that feel momentous. These quiet weeks, where you see the big day ahead on the horizon, feel watchful. We look to the sky and hope this weather holds for a few more weeks. We look at the bank account, and the air mattresses and the garden in bloom, and hope the same. Everything is about to happen, and staying on script is the hope but prepping for the what-ifs also is in the mix. We are grateful for the countdown, especially inside the last 30 days.
Sometimes we need to take a minute. All the research says that getting to where you see water is enormous for your mental health, your outlook, your feeling of wellness, and connection to where you are. A beach, a river or stream, a pond (over here, a quarry), an ocean or lake, even a swimming pool or a garden sprinkler, all factor in the equation. If you are a sunrise person, you know dawn over the water is unbeatable. Sunset people probably feel the same way. When the wind shifts, and leaves shimmy, gathering to watch stormclouds over the water is powerful — as in, there is so much we don’t control, but look at how it all moves. It may blow over, it may blow your hair back — but you are watchful and ready. For those of us who grew up on a lake, we know the cool air over the water meeting the warm air over land often makes for a rain squall — and the best thing about that is that afterward, the droplets in the air will refract light if it’s still daylight, and that’s how you get a rainbow (this is why rainbows are part of the culture in Ireland). Again, science.
In the midst of August, weathering changes and on the cusp of so much new and exciting about to break, this is the season of suspended time. Drink the coffee on the patio, have ice cream right out of the carton with a spoon, text friends late into the night, get up for sunrise, pet the dog, cheer for the home team, add a new playlist, make a fresh berry pie, tell your people you love them, savor and savor and savor. In the roots of language, “august” equates to ‘hallowed’ and ‘awe-inspiring’ and ‘grand’, so relish that, too. The leaves are about to change.
