August: a commentary

Oh, sad.

August used to be the month we waited for the mail to come.
(I've had that line-to-begin-something rattling 'round my brain about a week. Let's run with it.)

August used to be the month we waited for the mail to come. Experience had shown that letters revealing your fate for the year -- your homeroom teacher's name or your class schedule -- could arrive as early as August 1. By this time of year the days were dragging by because we had played every game and written every story we could think of by July 25, and we could barely wait for school to start. Needless to say, we sat near the window and kept an eagle eye on the mailbox beginning at the earliest conceivable time each day the mail lady might arrive.

August was the month that nothing ever changed. It was like a stock month they threw in to every calendar to pad out the summer a little. Only since they couldn't add half a month, they had to put a whole one in. And it was agonizingly long.

But since high school graduation, August took on a new face: the time for major change. Logically this had to happen because all my friends were college students and college students move to college in August. And even friends who weren't in college -- they were teachers moving to new jobs starting in August, or they were married to teachers or grad students...

Now I'm out of school and August is still a month for drastic change. Friends are moving to Japan, California, England, Ohio, Bahrain. It seems that August will continue to mark the annual life shift for a while yet. It still entails some frustrating waits, too. But overall, August is still a really long month. It at least matches January in draginess. (Though July seems to have taken forever this year, too. The Fourth of July was only a month ago?)

P.S. It's my grandma's birthday. Grandma 'Lene. And her twin sister. My sister and I used to get tongue-tied if we were telling a rushed story about Grandma 'Lene and Grandpa John and we'd say Grandpa 'Lene and Grandma John. And we'd laugh hysterically. It was almost as funny as the times in First Grade I'd talk about what I did in Art and Gym and my dad would pretend he thought Art and Jim were people.