August

On Now: What I'm reading, Appaloosa Bones, not wanting to go home, and silent sobbing

August was picking the first ripe tomatoes and eating nectarines over the sink. It was driving seven hundred miles to hug family under an orange sun until we were sweating in each other’s arms. It was eating homemade chocolate chip cookies for dinner and staying up late watching black and white Elvis movies. It was carousel rides and feeding donkeys blueberries from our open palms. It was lavender in my hair and pressed mint flowers from my grandmother’s garden and my father’s laugh like fireworks. It was the sound of the steel drum and cicadas and the corn cracking on its stalk. It was having my nieces curl themselves into me in my late grandfather’s rocking chair and trying not to cry. It was old hymns and my son’s tiny folded hands on the piano bench. It was crying alone in the dark at 4 a.m. to Gregory Alan Isakov’s new record. It was turning the pages of love and grief in old photo albums and the restless Monarch caterpillar eating the milkweed. It was coloring cartoon dinosaurs with papa and counting stepping stones to homes that are not ours. It was sherbet sunsets after summer storms and saying goodbye to the last of the fireflies. It was the warm sand dunes and collecting sea glass and wringing Lake Michigan from my hair. It was Sun Sugar tomatoes in my grandmother’s shaking hands and my silent sobbing on the way back to my father’s house. It was swinging in the dark and cold pizza and lake waves creeping up the hem of our jeans. It was watching my father show up for my son in all the ways my heart needed. It was planning our days around my son’s joy and reaping the bounty. It was saying goodbye to my grandmother and feeling like I was saying goodbye to my childhood and to home (whatever home was meant to be). It was backyard waterslides and ferris wheels and pink champagne. It was my mother’s birthday and my son’s chocolate-covered hands and making wishes. It was tiny footprints in the sand and watermelon mouths and collecting my son’s smiles for the days when life doesn’t feel as full as this. It was not wanting to go home and going anyway.