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| Tara, Adam, Aaron and Rachel
Today is the birthday of my twin sons. It is amazing how fast time flies and how much I still miss all three of them under my roof. I wrote this week's column for them and here it is!
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Mid-August shows up with the heat of the thunderstorms, and the heaviness of the vines in the garden. The first smooth, fresh zucchini is long gone and replaced with baseball size zucchinis that you cannot even give away! The tomatoes are heavy too.
As much as I love each month of the year, August is my
yin and yang. My twins were born on the 13th at the end of the Pleiades.
Every year on their birthday, we took sleeping bags and thermos bottles of hot
chocolate outside to wait for the
shooting stars. Sometimes we waited for hours, and just before we were to give
up, a star would whiz across the inky black sky. Then we had to wait for
another one. It was beautiful on the farm in those days. There were no
businesses to cast light, just darkness up on Windy Hill Farm.
August was full of canning beans and the last of the
raspberry jams: yet still waiting for the cabbages to split down the middle for
kraut making. The apples were still high in the tree and waiting for applesauce
and cider making.
For me, the sadness of August came with the beginning of
school. Aaron used to ask me not to tell him when school started until the
night before. As a young boy he knew the magic of “sucking the marrow out of
life” stated by Thoreau. We had a ritual of the night before school. Our ritual
was not that of new clothes…never new clothes. We piled the bikes into the back
of the truck and headed over to Pokagon for biking. Returning home, we took a
long, deep swim in the pond to cool off, and then to bed with freshly ironed
lavender sheets and pillowcases. Stories ended our evenings. There were always
stories no matter how late the night.
When my little ones were tucked into bed, I went out to
the porch swing, wrapped in a quilt, and cried my eyes out. Another school
year. Another year older. Another year closer to my little boys packing their
satchel and going off to seek their fortune in the world.
As I sat on that swing, the only sound was that of Doc
Headley out in his fields on his tractor. The only light was the dim headlight
on that tractor.
The farm is long gone. The boys have left to seek their
fortune. Doc is also long gone, leaving me with stories and memories and
seeking my new normal.
August brings for me now time with my new (used) kayak.
Why did I wait so long for this pleasure, I ask myself. There is such joy in
gliding on the still, quiet water, and with 101 lakes, I must hurry if I plan
to kayak on all of them in the years to come. My kayak sits next to my fence
just waiting for the next adventure!
This past week August brought me the great pleasure of an
early morning Yoga class outside under the trees. My friend, Anita Workman,
gave me a call asking if I would like to join her in this class. “Just the two
of us?” How could I say no?
I arrived early, and we set up outside under her trees
with our instructor, Amanda. Amanda currently lives in the Caribbean and
teaches Yoga on the beach, but on this morning, she is our teacher next to the
Indiana cornfields, and we take our place on the blankets with towels and cool
water next to us. I feel so honored to have been the invited one. There was no
sound but that of a woodpecker in a faraway tree, and the rustle of the corn.
It was a magical morning in which I thought, each morning should start like
this. After an hour and a half, it was
time to get back into the real world, but oh, it was a wonderful way to start
the day.
August. I re-read
one of my favorite books, “Dandelion Wine,” by Ray Bradbury. It is the month of
the shooting stars and the return of the constellation, Orion. It is the month
of school starting, and gardens ending.
It is also a month of new beginnings. New friendships.
New kayak adventures, and if I am lucky, someone will call and say, “Hey, Lou
Ann, do you want to?” And I will say yes. I will always say yes.”
Happy star gazing, and happy birthday to my sons.
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