August
On my emotional calendar, today is the last day of summer.
Life in the time of COVID seems to have laid ruin to spring and summer, making the seasons run into one long quarantine haze.
In my case, I’ve never had so much to do and then suddenly so little to do. And I have had plenty of time to do it.
It was a turbulent journey from Columbus to Nashville in March, the beginning of the pandemic in America. While Phil set up his office in our tiny temporary apartment, I went back to Ohio. Our belongings were wrapped in miles of brown paper and stuffed into boxes by people I would not allow within six feet of my personal space.
In April we bought the perfect house. It was sitting empty like it was waiting for us in what we could imagine would be a delightful little neighborhood once the leaves turned green. We were right It’s lovely.
Summer crept up on us. I kept busy in May by unpacking boxes, finding things, and then finding a place for things. Every day I held out hope I would stumble upon a missing cushion from our patio sectional. My box cutter went through two blades. The garage became jammed with 100-square feet of moving debris. The wayward cushion never surfaced.
All this time, my husband and I remained healthy and kept our quarantine as pristine as possible. We went almost nowhere and saw almost no one. Contactless delivery is our way of life now.
June came and we were, at last, settled into what seemed like our new normal. Phil kept making his 10-yard commute each morning to his home office. The dog went with him.
And I had to find things to do.
Home decor books were perused for inspiration. Photos on my phone were turned into art and then into memories on our new walls. Many meals were cooked. Cookbooks were scoured for new ideas. Instagram lit up with colorful dishes.
In July we added a screened patio to our back yard. The patio sectional — the one with the conspicuous empty space that the lost cushion should have filled — was given away to a neighbor. New furniture replaced it. New rugs. An outdoor TV. We were settled.
Having cooked, cleaned, and decorated as much as I could in 2,100 square feet, I decided in early August to look for satisfying work to fill my days. Many resumes were sent. Many applications were completed. Many follow-up requests were emailed.
No one has called.
I try not feel worthless, but I do. Every day I give myself a pep talk to get up and make my bed. Every day I recite my list of blessings and remind myself how fortunate I am to be secure and healthy.
Almost every day I win the battle against the violent, ugly cry that bubbles up from my throat and simmers just inside my eyes.
Summers always end with a slap of inhumanely hot weather, maybe so we won’t miss it when it goes. August air in Nashville feels hot tub water. The new patio will remain unused until fall, I suspect. On the most brutally hot days, after I have risen and reminded myself to be grateful, I sit in my favorite chair and listen to my new obsessions: the podcast Phoebe (Judge) Reads a Mystery and the new Taylor Swift album, “folklore.”
While Judge keeps me grounded with her dulcet voice wrapping my imagination in cozy mysteries, Swift’s new collection of songs stir my feelings of restlessness.
Swift’s song “august” is about a doomed teenage romance, so the lyrics aren’t totally relatable to me, but the song included soaring strings and a bass riff that feeds my soul. It brings my heart back to a dream I’ve had for decades.
I close my eyes and feel like I am zipping along a westward highway under the bluest summer sky. I imagine glancing at sun-drenched farm fields out the window as I speed by. To me, the long rows of corn always look like slender legs running along the open road.
I imagine white stars during the darkest nights. I fill my lungs with the dry desert air. I document every soft hue of every distant mountain.
Global pandemic be damned, as I listen to this album, I am on that highway and in perpetual motion, spilling every emotion into the universe, singing off-key with every song and not stopping until I ran out of road and saw the sunset on the sea.
But it will always just be a fantasy that finds it’s trigger in songs and poems and wistful glances at puffy clouds. I will never be brave enough — or foolish enough — to actually spend a summer road tripping because my life has never belonged solely to me and my courage to look for adventure was beaten out of me years ago.
So my 56th summer concludes in the era of COVID, feeling lucky to be healthy, feeling lonely and sad but trying to be brave, and trying to keep dreams under control.
August slipped away like a moment in time because it was never mine.
