Last days, First days
July is my favorite month. If months were trading cards, I would prize my Julys and get rid of all my Februarys, foist them off on some unsuspecting fool who thought he was getting a deal and snicker.
July has Independence Day, my birthday, and my wedding anniversary, along with some spectacular weather toward the end. If July didn't exist, I would invent it. Even the name "July" sounds happy. It's a happy month.
June, on the other hand, can be problematic.
We ended June in sort of an Edgar Allen Poe fashion in this house, which didn't surprise me at all. At 4 a.m. Wednesday morning, which is actually about 10 p.m. in Daughter Time, Beth was watching TV in her room when she heard a noise outside her window. Something was walking on the roof, and it sounded big. More moose than squirrel.
So, for the first time in her life, she sought comfort and reassurance from her brother, who was also up, having switched to Son Time for the summer. My kids are just bizarre right now.
John's door is approximately 12 feet from my pillow, where my head usually is at 4 a.m., so naturally I got to join the party. As I headed for the front door to go outside and solve the mystery, Beth got brave and opened her blinds, and saw the eyes.
Red, glowing eyes.
This was a raccoon the size of a Labrador, although that's her opinion; it was gone by the time her mother, brother and I raced back in her room. I suspect it was a little smaller than that.
I offered the opinion that it was a vampire raccoon, a member of the undead, doomed to walk the earth without a soul and prey on unsuspecting trash cans, but I was just guessing.
So the last day of June started in an odd way, you could say. And since I was up, I stayed up. It was getting light, anyway, and I was pretty sure the 'coon had slunk back to its coffin. And the combination of a week of less than usual sleep and godawful stress from dealing with the mortgage company turned me into Sleep-Deprived Crazy Man.
Unfortunately, I didn't realize this until six hours later, by which time I'd consumed half a gallon of iced tea, so I ended up sitting on the couch, needing to sleep but being prodded by the caffeine to stay awake. Sort of self-imposed torture, and I don't mean in the good way.
So I went to the grocery store.
It had occurred to my addled brain that my kids would eventually crawl out of bed in mid-afternoon, yawning and talking about the raccoon and wanting food. My wife would be gone by then, off to the big city to meet Bubba, and I thought it was possible that I would hear, "There's nothing to eat" about, say, a million times and in my state I would snap. Just fall apart, scream or break something breakable, although probably nothing human.
I bought barbecue food, food for the grill; I think I was slightly delirious, since cooking out back, facing west on a hot day only a week past the solstice, tired and irritable and wondering if raccoons actually have souls, is never my idea of a good time. But I could see July coming, sense it, smell all its happy July things, so I bought brats and buns and steak and chicken and barbecue sauce and Dr. Pepper.
I never went back to sleep. I watched a movie, "Spartan," which is a David Mamet film that got good reviews, but even though I like Mamet a lot, with his quirkiness and wonderful dialogue, it left me cold. More of a December movie, I think.
And then the children got up, straggled out, blinking in the honest-to-God sunlight, and I lit the coals and Beth sang.
She's having an uneasy summer, my girl, with not much in the way of employment and currently no car to drive, wondering about the future and why her memories are getting fuzzy. "High school is blurry," she wrote the other day. She saw a picture of herself in the eighth grade and didn't recognize the girl. When did I change? she wonders. When did I turn into what I am, and what am I going to be?
I read her journal online, so I know this stuff. Plus, she talks.
I remember this well enough, being almost 20 and doing a lot of forward gazing and retrospective thinking. Things are happening, life is moving along at a slightly quicker pace, it's a sleepy summer so far and her Scooby gang that got her through high school is slowly, ever so slowly slipping away.
So she sings. She sits at the piano, as she did when she was 14, and plays and sings, rummaging through the music her mother's collected over the years, arias and show tunes.
And I stood on the back deck and turned the meat over, and I realized what I was doing. I wanted to tell her that it would be okay, that July was coming, that it always comes, but she doesn't need to listen to me, so I was doing the only thing I could. I was feeding her. And I did. I always have, from the days when I'd make her sloppy joes and scrambled eggs to burgers, to teriyaki chicken tacos and fajitas.
And really, that's all I can do. That, and give her money for shoes and chase away demon raccoons before dawn. And that has to be enough, I guess.
I fell asleep at 8 on John's bed, watching him play a video game, and then I woke when my wife came home with tales of Bill. I caught a little Leno and Letterman and then went back to bed, and that's how I saw out June, sleepy and worrying and feeding, standing on the deck in the sun, blinking back tears from the smoke, listening to my daughter sing Sondheim songs, and knowing July was coming, and not a moment too soon.
1:11:31 PM 
|
|
